x FOREWORD 
their last stand, that their backs are up against the 
pitiless wall of what we call civilization. Human 
rights are triumphing over animal rights, and it 
would be hard to determine which rights are really 
superior or most worthy to survive. 
Akeley came twenty-seven years ago into the 
midst of this unequal contest between the flesh and 
blood of the animal kingdom and the steel and lead 
of the sportsman, of the food and ivory hunter, and 
his sympathies were all on the animal side in the 
fight. If his sympathies had been on the human 
side he could not be the biographer of the African 
vanishing world who speaks in the pages of this 
volume, lost in admiration of the majesty of the 
elephant, the unchallenged reign of the lion, the 
beauty and grace of the antelope, the undaunted 
courage of the buffalo, and, last but not least, of 
certain splendid qualities in the native African hunter. 
We know of only one other sculptor who has immor- 
talized the African Negro in bronze; this is Herbert 
Ward, whose splendid life work is now in the United 
States National Museum. 
Similarly, Carl E. Akeley’s life work will be as- 
sembled in the African and Roosevelt Halls of the 
American Museum, in human bronzes, in a great 
group of the elephant, in rhinoceroses and gorillas, 
each group representing his unerring portrayal of the 
character of the animal and his sympathetic admi- 
ration of its finest qualities. It is in making close 
observations for these groups that he has lived so 
long in Africa and come very close to death on three 
