Okie in Africa

A Jersey City taxidermist named John Hansen got a letter last week about a friend with whom he used to hunt big game. His friend was Charlie Cottar of Garfield County, Okla., who migrated to East Africa. He went out in 1910, when he was past 40, and he took with him his wife and as much stuff as he could pack in a bullock cart. He cleared 1,000 acres and planted them to coffee, potatoes and sisal, but most of his time he spent as guide to big-game hunters such as Martin Johnson, the Prince of Wales, Phil Plant and the Aga Khan.

Charlie Cottar was the first man to chew cut plug in East Africa. It awed the natives. So did his exploits as a hunter. He kicked a water buffalo in the rump to make it face his gun. He choked a leopard to death. Once he took a leopard cub home and raised it as a pet. When the leopard grew up he took it with him on hunting trips. It would follow him like a Scottie. One night he woke up in his tent with a leopard breathing on his face, getting ready to spring. Charlie Cottar felt for his rhinoceros whip, jumped to his feet, whipped the leopard out of the tent and into the jungle. Walking back to his tent, feeling bad about the way his pet had turned out, he felt something lick his hand. It was his pet leopard. The other one had come out of the jungle.

The letter Taxidermist Hansen got last week was postmarked Nairobi. It was from one of Charlie Cottar's sons:

"Dear John. . . .

"Dad and Bud were out making some pictures when they became separated for a while. Dad was charged by a rhino and was gored in the right thigh.

"There is no use telling you that he went down fighting to the last. His first shot found its mark but the rhino did not fall until it had got him. Even after it had gored him and it fell across his legs, he kept firing until his gun was empty. It just happened that where it got him it broke the artery. Dad lived only for an hour and a half. . . .

"Well, John, there is not much more news here so I had better end this and go to bed. . . .

"Ted."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.