THROUGH THE PLEISTOCENE 5 



care of the custom-houses in San Domingo, or serving in 

 the army of occupation in Cuba. Moreover, I felt as if I 

 knew most of them already, for they might have walked out 

 of the pages of Kipling. But I was not as well prepared for 

 the corresponding and equally interesting types among the 

 Germans, the planters, the civil officials, the officers who 

 had commanded, or were about to command, white or na- 

 tive troops; men of evident power and energy, seeing whom 

 made it easy to understand why German East Africa has 

 thriven apace. They are first-class men, these English and 

 Germans; both are doing in East Africa a work of worth 

 to the whole world; there is ample room for both, and no 

 possible cause for any but a thoroughly friendly rivalry; and 

 it is earnestly to be wished, in the interest both of them and 

 of outsiders, too, that their relations will grow, as they ought 

 to grow, steadily better and not only in East Africa but 

 everywhere else. 



On the ship, at Naples, we found Selous, also bound 

 for East Africa on a hunting trip; but he, a veteran whose 

 first hunting in Africa was nearly forty years ago, cared only 

 for exceptional trophies of a very Tew animals, while we, on 

 the other hand, desired specimens of both sexes of all the 

 species of big game that Kermit and I could shoot, as well 

 as complete series of all the smaller mammals. We be- 

 lieved that our best work of a purely scientific character 

 would be done with the mammals, both large and small. 



No other hunter alive has had the experience of Selous; 

 and, so far as I now recall, no hunter of anything like his 

 experience has ever also possessed his gift of penetrating 

 observation joined to his power of vivid and accurate nar- 

 ration. He has killed scores of lion and rhinoceros and 



