AFRICAN RESEARCHES. 407 



A rhinoceros which one day committed a most unpardonable 

 act of familiarity, by bouncing into the midst of a party of 

 three or four of them, was most unceremoniously despatched 

 by a bullet sent in at his garret- window ; — a favorite method, 

 by the bye, with the Captain, of disturbing the meditations 

 of the Hippopotamus. 



" Garret- window," it may be as well to mention en passant, 

 is a professional term for the organ of vision, though in the 

 absence of this explanation we fear Capt. Harris will have 

 given some of his readers the erroneous impression, that the 

 Hippopotami, like the beavers, erect regular habitations. 



From the extraordinary success which attended the Cap- 

 tain's rifle in the rhinoceros line, our readers will readily 

 conceive, without going farther into details, that elephants, 

 lions, alligators, and other descriptions of game, large and 

 small, had each in their turn a benefit from the grooves of 

 this formidable weapon. He had taken care to provide himself 

 at starting, with eighteen thousand bullets, besides an abun- 

 dance of uncast lead ; and subsequent sportsmen, who are in- 

 clined to follow a route so rich in the harvest it offers, have, 

 we should suppose, merely to track the course of the expedi- 

 tion, by following up the line of skeletons which, thanks to 

 the shooting mania of Captain Harris, lie whitening in the 

 sun on the African plains. 



A more decided contrast to the work under notice than that 

 presented by the second on our list, as to general style and 

 character, cannot well be imagined. Never was there a more 

 striking illustration of the way in which impressions, con- 

 veyed by physical facts, are modified under the influence of 

 individual temperament and preconceived ideas. Captain 

 Harris is a shrewd, high-spirited, daring, energetic fellow, 

 whose whole soul is wrapped up in the subject on which he 

 writes. The detonating principle, and the organ of propul- 

 sion, may be detected in every stroke of his pen. He looks 

 at the lions and gigantic African pachyderms, as only created 

 that he may amuse himself with planting bullets in their gar- 

 ret-windows. The possibility of his being one day honoured 

 by serving as a luncheon to his feline majesty, or as a nose- 

 ball to a black rhinoceros, fertile as is his imagination, never 

 once comes within the boundary of his speculations. Sir 

 James Alexander's narrative, if we except the texts of Scrip- 

 ture, doggrel rhymes, and Latin phrases of three words and a 

 half, with which it is copiously interlarded, gives you the idea 

 of the rotation of the waggon-wheel regulating the machin- 

 ery by which the passing events are committed to paper. — 

 Here and there a jolt, or a run down a declivity, occasions a 



Vol. III.— No. 32. n. s. 2 u 



