282 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



tion. In the earliest times man was, of necessity, a 

 hunter, to provide for himself and his family a food 

 supply, and to defend them against what must, in 

 those dim ages, have been an almost overpowering 

 animal creation. By slow degrees man seems to 

 have prevailed, and as slowly his weapons became 

 more and more deadly. In those gross beginnings of 

 time it may, in truth, be said that the chase was 

 purely and simply an effort of self-defence. In pro- 

 cess of the ages hunting became elevated to a very 

 high place. Next to great warriors great hunters 

 have been — even to these degenerate days — cele- 

 brated. And, still more commonly, the famous war- 

 rior has been a brave and active hunter. The stone 

 records of the Assyrians teem with exploits of the 

 chase. Even the less active and less warlike Egyp- 

 tians testify upon their monuments to the deeds of 

 their kings, and their interest in wild animal life. 

 Amenemhat I makes record of his hunting prowess. 

 " I hunted the lion," he says, " and I brought back 

 the crocodile a prisoner." Thothmes III was a 

 great hunter and collector. Fifteen hundred years 

 before the Christian era he hunted elephants in the 

 jungles of Mesopotamia, and came near losing his 

 life on one occasion. From the sacred land of Punt 

 — probably the present Somaliland — and other dim 

 recesses of Africa there streamed to Thothmes a 

 constant succession of strange animals. Giraffes, 



