I took a slight detour on the way home, not realizing the late hour. I took one of those pathways on the south bank of the river, festooned with dripping, overhanging branches, resplendent in the full blossom of mid-summer, an odd lavender plant adding some fragrance.
Two readings, both from Louisiana, originally.
Twice, in one day, I found myself on Lamar Avenue. Once at the Shoal Creek Saloon, and once at Amy’s, then over to Waterloo & etc.
Double L day, I guess. Twice on Lamar and both times with a female of the Louisiana persuasion.
Lots of Scorpio floating around, that’s for sure.
Then, on that pathway home, I didn’t realize it, but the moonlight, the Moon was in Scorpio, just past First Quarter, I guess, and the light was gently illuminating the puddles. The air was still and almost steamy, but I peeled out of my shirt, and it was suddenly almost cool out. Delicious.
A little dinner, a little astrology chat, a little ice cream. A little gossip, too. Relaxed times in Austin. The rain’s been sporadic, but I’m sure it’s about to clear up and turn into a hot summer yet.
I kept waiting to be spooked by the shadows and the play of light through the branches, but it never happened. A very faint layer of steam was coming from the lake’s surfaces, almost like a mirror in the moonlight.
The Lunatic Express
The Lunatic Express by Charles Miller – Man-eating lions. Insects. A few wild and wooly adventuring entrepreneurs. The problem with strict history books, like this one, the first half of the text concerns (boring) legal, company, and political wranglings – all the business necessary to grease the wheel so the greatest folly could be built. Then it gets better. Much better.
“Ryall, the Superintendent of Railway Police, found it necessary to leave Mombasa in order to deal with disturbances in Nairobi – although he never reached his desintation, being sidetracked at Kima, where he became the the first and only official in the history of labor arbitration to be eaten by a lion.” (Page 382)
That one line summarized the last half of the book. Not in its entirety, but close enough for me to pull it out. That’s why the book was titled The Lunatic Express because only fools would wander out in the desert, the mountains, the outback of Africa and try and tame it by building railway to Lake Victoria.
Undertaken at the heighth of the British Empire, the Uganda Railway was quite a project. Having read Stephen Ambrose’s Nothing Like It In The World, I was familar with some of the terminology, the concepts, and some of the problems faced when building a long rail line. And both books have these long, boring beginnings that all deal with who said what, how the press was treating the project, what the first explorers were like, but at least in Lunatic Express, the explorers include the famous Livingstone, as well as a host of other historical characters.
I was left, at one point, with the sense that they really did wear pith helmets, and the Victorians rambling around in the tucker brush did have high tea at 4:00 PM. And in that respect? Expectations live up to the what the book claims.
There’s another element, too, that left me a little confused at first. Before tackling this book, get out a map of Africa, preferably a dated map, and get familiar with what expanses are where. Plus, there’s the troubling concept of the names of the African tribes, the names of the tribes’ elders, and just who was king of what area. English politics in the late 19th century were bad enough, but compound that with a fleeting overview of what was going on with Africa and colonization, and there’s more – for me – troubling material to keep track of. I never did manage to pronounce half the names in the book. Must be by own, limited, Western heritage.
Nairobi, which I thought was always there, was nothing more than point picked by the construction crew. Or so I gathered.
And Kima, where Ryall got eaten by a lion? Turns out that’s an exciting bit of history in colonization, in and of itself. Of course, some of the precept of Victorian expansion and colonization don’t hold up well in modern, politically correct ways. Not that it matters, either.
