Transcriber's note: Transcriber added the title and author'sname to the original cover and placed these modifications into the Public Domain.
A CAMERA ACTRESS IN THE
WILDS OF TOGOLAND
By permission of
Maj. H. Schomburgk, F.R.G.S.
Konkombwa Warrior in Full Gala Dress
The helmet is a calabash, elaborately ornamented with cowrie shells, and surmounted by a finepair of roan antelope horns. Other less lucky warriors, or less clever hunters, content themselveswith the smaller horns of the commoner puku antelope. Note the beautifully ornamented quiverfilled with poisoned arrows.
A CAMERA ACTRESS
IN THE WILDS OF
TOGOLAND
THE ADVENTURES, OBSERVATIONS & EXPERIENCES OF A
CINEMATOGRAPH ACTRESS IN WEST AFRICAN FORESTS
WHILST COLLECTING FILMS DEPICTING NATIVE
LIFE AND WHEN POSING AS THE WHITE
WOMAN IN ANGLO-AFRICAN
CINEMATOGRAPH DRAMAS
BY
MISS M. GEHRTS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MAJOR H. SCHOMBURGK
WITH 65 ILLUSTRATIONS & A MAP
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
LONDON: SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LTD.
1915
INTRODUCTION
By Major H. Schomburgk, F.R.G.S.
It was after my return from my first WestAfrican cinema expedition, in June 1913,that I made up my mind to try and filmnative dramas in their true and proper settings.
My aim was to visualise, as it were, for theEuropean public, scenes from African native lifeas it once was all over the continent, and as it iseven now in the more remote and seldom-visitedparts; and it was further my object to so presentthe various incidents as to ensure their beingpleasing and interesting to all classes and conditionsof people.
To this end, then, it became necessary for me tofind a white woman capable of acting the principalparts, supported by native supers. My thoughts atonce reverted to Miss Gehrts, a lady with whomI have been acquainted for some little while,and whom I knew to be a keen sportswoman, agood rider, and possessed of histrionic ability of nomean order.
It did not take me long to persuade her toaccept the offer I made her; but her parents raisedmany objections, based principally on the supposeddangers and privations which they assumed—notaltogether wrongly—to be inseparable from thetrip. These objections, however, were eventuallyviovercome, the enterprise was undertaken andbrought to a successful conclusion, and this bookis one result of it.
Personally, I must confess to not being altogetherfavourably impressed with the ordinary African"travel book" of the typical globe-trotting womanwriter: the kind of one, I mean, who either conscientiouslyand carefully hugs the coast, or elseventures but a little way into the hinterland alongthe ordinary cara