Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/192

 baffle walls, makes economical floor and roof slabs, and is being used extensively in putting up walls of buildings that are permanent and fireproof.

My next trip to Africa in 1909 also served to develop another activity besides taxidermy. One of the principal objects of this trip was to get moving pictures of the Nandi spearing lions. However, I found that you can't stage a native lion hunt with any certainty, for neither the lion nor the native, once the action begins, pays any attention to the movie director. In order to have even a fair chance of following the action with a camera you need one that you can aim up, down, or in any direction with about the same ease that you can point a pistol. There were no movie cameras like this, and after failing to get pictures of several lions I determined not to go to Africa again until I had one.

When I got home I set to work on the problem and after much experimentation completed a working model that bore no likeness to the conventional motion-picture apparatus. To one familiar with the old types of camera the Akeley resembled a machine gun quite as much as it resembled a camera. During the war I used to say that the boys who operated it would be well protected and Photoplay in January, 1919, related a story of the American advance in France which bore out my opinion. While setting up the machine to make some shots in a still-burning and newly occupied village, a young lieutenant was confronted suddenly by seven Germans. Mistaking his formidable film apparatus for a new type of Yan