BIG GAME SHOOTING. 3 



been absent, would men like Harris, Gordon-Cumming, Oswell, and Baldwin have 

 cared to push into the interior? 



The men who used to kill elephants as a business have often been termed 

 butchers, but we must remember if they had not killed them someone else would ; 

 and besides, without the money raised on the ivory, they would have been unable 

 in many cases to have carried on their expeditions. 



Take Selous, for example. He hunted elephants in Mashonaland when there 

 were very few white men in that country, but nowadays no one can deny that 

 he was a temperate hunter. 



It would certainly be strange that if a man found himself in a new country, 

 without game laws, he should abstain from killing elephants for profit when 

 they were the only means of paying the expenses of his expedition. 



The game suffers more at the hands of the native than of the white man, for he 

 is always at it, and the animals get no rest in or out of season, and the native would just 

 as soon shoot a female or young animal as a full-grown male. 



Many of the elephant and hippo one shoots have been the recipients of native 

 iron bullets, for one seldom kills the former without being able to find a few of their 

 missiles in various parts of the beast's anatomy. 



Of course, in British territory the native is not allowed to kill game, but he does 

 it all the same. In Portuguese territory the natives kill most of the game, for the 

 Portuguese official is seldom a man who cares a scrap about shooting ; in fact, he 

 seldom moves a mile from his station except in a machilla (hammock on poles). 



They serve out guns and powder to their natives, and buy the tusks and horns 

 for a few yards of calico. 



The natives, not possessing strong cordite rifles, but only antiquated Brown 

 Bess muzzle-loaders, wound considerably more than they kill, and their only idea is to 

 get meat, the trophy being of no value to them. We have heard of the Britisher, too, 

 who has given the native a gun to shoot meat or get heads for him. Such a man 

 could never claim to be a sportsman. 



Poison is also sometimes used to kill carnivorous animals, but we think this a 

 shameful practice, for if the animal cannot be shot by fair means, it should be left 

 alone. The man who poisons a lion or a leopard we put on a par with the man that 

 would throw poison into a trout stream at home. 



The laying of set guns and traps can hardly be termed sport, but is, perhaps, 

 legitimate for obtaining some of the smaller animals (mostly nocturnal), which it would 

 be almost impossible to obtain in the ordinary way, and which, in the interests of science, 

 one might wish to secure ; also in the case of a lion or leopard causing destruction 



