The Ghost and the Darkness is a 1996 movie starring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. It is ostensibly the story of John Patterson (played by Kilmar)--an engineer sent to design and oversee the construction of a railroad bridge in 1898 over the Tsavo River in what is today Kenya--and his efforts to hunt and kill a pair of man-eating lions that were feeding on the workers. The movie was good and, since I first saw it, I had been interested in tracking down Patterson's book.
A couple months ago I watched the movie again and afterward found that his book was available for the Kindle. Notwithstanding the title, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, the book actually covers much more of Patterson's experiences in East Africa while working on the Uganda-Mombasa railway than just the story of the two-lions. The story of the two man-eaters is only about the first third of the book and, unsurprisingly, very different from the movie. The movie, in fact, is pretty much fiction. The lions were a problem--according to Patterson they took and killed pretty much one worker a day during the times they were around the work crews--but labor disputes threatened the project more than the lion attacks.
The movie character Charles Remington (played by Douglas) was apparently made up whole cloth. The railroad financier that berates Patterson in the movie also makes no appearance in the book--it appears that Patterson had no issues with higher-ups.
Other events portrayed in the movie are sensationalized or taken from events that occurred after the two lions were killed. For instance, one of the creepier scenes in the movie is when Patterson and Remington, while attempting to track the lions, stumble across a cave used by the lions as a den or shelter. In the book, Patterson did stumble across the lions' cave, but this was by accident and after the two lions had been killed. He did note that it was filled with many human bones--apparently bodies that the lions had dragged back to the cave to consume, some still with native jewelry on the bones.
While the movie was intended to be a somewhat creepy, disturbing story, the book was quite different in tone. It is obvious from the book that Patterson had two great loves: engineering and big game hunting. The book is mostly about the latter--and Patterson seems to hunt almost all of the dangerous game Africa has to offer--but offers descriptions and mention of his work designing and overseeing construction. And it is a type of travelogue as well, even ending with recommendations and advice (and prices) for someone wanting to travel to East Africa to hunt big game.
As a firearms aficionado, I was interested in the weapons used by Patterson, his compatriots, and the African and Indian workers and assistants. My biggest surprise is that, other than a couple occasions when he borrowed a larger double rifle or made use of a shotgun, almost all of his hunting--including the lion hunting--was done with a .303 Enfield bolt-action rifle. I've read of other hunters of that era using smaller, high velocity calibers, but I was nevertheless surprised.
Patterson's willingness to use the smaller bore rifle also seems to fit into his character and the general attitude at the time (at least in East Africa): danger and risk seemed to be welcome and even a source of humor, and death and injury was too common to mourn or obsess about.
Anyway, if you've seen The Ghost and the Darkness or like books on big game hunting, the British Colonial period in Africa, or just a good memoir, I think you would enjoy Patterson's book.
I'll have to give it a read. The stupid mistakes from all characters in the movie always irked me.
ReplyDeleteNot enough to ruin the movie, but still.