101 Camping Out Ideas & Activities

TALES OF MASTER TRACKERS

Seeing tracks is one thing; being able to read them is something else again. Understanding the story told by tracks is primarily a matter of drawing conclusions. Here are some anecdotes that illustrate this point.

During the Civil War some soldiers looking for a lost comrade asked an Indian boy if he had seen the fellow they were seeking. The boy replied, "Do you mean a tall soldier riding a lame roan horse?"

But when the soldiers asked him where he had seen their lost friend, the Indian answered, "Oh, I haven't seen him at all." Instead, he led the soldiers to a tree where some roan horsehairs stuck to the bark at the spot where the horse had brushed against it. The hoof tracks showed that the horse had limped, because one hoof did not leave as deep an impression as the others, and the steps made with this hoof were not as long. The Indian observed that the rider had been a soldier from the boot prints he left when he dismounted, and concluded that he had been exception­ally tall because a tree branch had broken off at a height that a shorter person could not have reached.

At the turn of the century Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, was the best-known English intelli­ gence officer and spy. One day during the South African War, he was reconnoitering on a broad, grassy plain not far from the Matopo Hills in Southern Rhodesia when he came across almost invisible footprints. Baden-Powell knew that they were still fresh, because the blades of grass had not yet straightened up. From the blades, too, he discovered the direction in which the unknown persons were marching. He followed the tracks until they finally crossed a sand dune. The soft sand clearly showed that some tracks had been made by small, sharply-outlined feet taking longer steps. The conclusion: the tracks belonged to women and children. They must have been walking, not running, and the depth of the footprints indicated that the people had been carrying loads.

The tracks went in the direction of the Matopo Hills, about five miles from where Baden-Powell's men were. It was in the Hills that the rebellious Matabele tribe was hiding out. As he continued to follow the tracks, the alert man came across a mahobahoba leaf lying near the trail. In the entire surrounding area there were no such trees—but Baden-Powell knew that mahobahoba trees grew in a village that lay about fifteen miles back. Therefore, he could assume that the women and children of this village had gone into the hills. He also noticed that the leaf was wet, and it smelled of native beer. From this he concluded that the women were carrying beer on their heads in clay jugs which they stoppered, according to their custom, with bundles of leaves. Just such a leaf had fallen to the ground. But the leaf had been found several feet from the footprints, so evidently the wind had carried it there. However, at the moment there was not a bit of wind. On the other hand, a fresh breeze had been blowing a short time before. From this Baden-Powell could tell what time the women and children arrived at the Matopo Hills. He realized that the men would drink the beer right away, before it turned sour in the heat of the day, and then they would be drowsy and unobservant. Therefore, he hastened to press forward and continued to follow the tracks, and he was able to make important observations in the immediate vicinity of the rebellious natives.

Australian aborigines even today retain an ability to read tracks that seems to us fantastic.

A recently reported case concerned a lost four-year-old child in New South Wales . Forty men from the settlement searched in impenetrable underbrush for a whole day, both afoot and on horseback, without finding a single recognizable "footprint." Then a native tracker was sent for, although there seemed to be no discoverable trace on the sun-dried ground. The aborigine circled the house at continually increasing distances. Finally he stopped, and then struck out on a straight path along which he followed mysterious "tracks" which no one else saw: a crushed leaf here, a bent branch there, a little pebble almost unnoticeably moved to one side. He frequently dropped to all fours, and twice he lost the traces on stony ground. But at dusk he led the anxious searchers to the lost child, who lay sleeping propped against a tree trunk.

The keen perceptions of these people can only be explained by their hard battle for existence. Stalking game with stone-age hunting weapons in the Australian wastelands may well have kept their senses awake and sharp, and it probably also enables them to make deductions with such presence of mind. The aborigine does not infer from the tracks merely what animal made them; the traces also reveal to him how large or how old the animal is and whether it is healthy, fresh and in good condition, or sick and tired.

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