264 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



of the interior during the season of the rains, when 

 Nature was at her best and bravest. The veldt was 

 verdurous, and starred with a million flowers; the 

 forests were dressed in their newest and freshest 

 attire; the legions of migratory birds were all 

 attracted south by the rains ; the rivers and streams 

 were full and flowing; never was African scenery 

 more beautiful. With Adam, amid the pristine glory 

 of nature, he might well have said — 



" About me round I saw 



Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains, 

 And liquid lapse of murmuring streams : by these 

 Creatures that lived and moved, and walked or flew, 

 Birds on the branches warbling ; all things smiled." 



A record of these notable wanderings appeared 

 subsequently in that delightful book Wild Sports 

 of Southern Africa. But Cornwallis Harris, besides 

 being a hunter primus m terris, was a capable artist 

 and a sound naturalist, and in his other and greater 

 work, Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of 

 Southern Africa^ he has handed down to posterity 

 a complete catalogue of the fauna of that country, 

 with coloured drawings and minutely accurate de- 

 scriptions of almost every kind of game then known 

 to exist between the Zambesi and the Indian Ocean. 

 In a hundred years' time this noble work (even now 

 scarce) will, when most of the animals depicted in it 

 shall have become extinct, be a treasure indeed. 



