en. I] ouii TAirrv 3 



comparison is not fanciful. The teeming multitudes of 

 wild creatures, the stupendous size of some of them, the 

 terrible nature of others, and the low culture of many 

 of the savage tribes, especially of the hunting tribes, 

 substantially reproduces the conditions of life in Europe 

 as it was led by our ancestors ages before the dawn of 

 anything that could be called civilization. The great 

 beasts that now live in East Africa were in that bygone 

 age represented by close kinsfolk in Europe ; and in 

 many places, up to the present moment, African man, 

 absolutely naked, and armed as our early palaeolithic 

 ancestors were armed, lives among, and on, and in 

 constant dread of, these beasts, just as was true of the 

 men to whom the cave lion was a nightmare of terror, 

 and the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros possible 

 but most formidable prey. 



This region, this great fragment out of the long- 

 buried past of our race, is now accessible by railroad to 

 all who care to go thither ; and no field more inviting 

 offers itself to hunter or naturalist, while even to the 

 ordinary traveller it teems with interest. On March 23, 

 1909, I sailed thither from Xew York, in charge of a 

 scientific expedition sent out by the Smithsonian In- 

 stitute, to collect birds, mammals, reptiles, and plants, 

 but especially specimens of big game, for the National 

 Museum at Washington. In addition to myself and 

 my son Kermit (who had entered Harvard a few 

 months previously), the party consisted of three 

 naturalists : Surgeon- Lieutenant -Colonel Edgar A. 

 Mearns, U.S.A., retired ; Mr. Edmund Heller, of 

 California ; and IVIr. J. Alden Loring, of Owego, New 

 York. My arrangements for the trip had been chiefly 

 made through two valued English friends, Mr. Frederick 

 Courteney Selous, the greatest of the world's big- game 



