CHAPTER LXX. 



SIR. w. c. HARRIS'S GIRAFFE HUNT. 



SOME of the best and most animating accounts of giraffe bunts 

 we contained in the work of Sir W. Cornwallis Harris. Of his 

 magnificent folio, " Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of 

 Africa," we cannot speak too highly ; it is equal, in many respects, 

 to the truly-superb folios of Mr. Gould. From it we extract the 

 following spirit-stirring adventures : 



It was on the morning of our departure from the residence of his 

 Amazoola majesty, that I first actually saw the giraffe. Although 

 I had been for some weeks on the tiptoe of expectation, we had hith 

 erto succeeded in finding the gigantic footsteps only of the tallest ct 

 all the quadrapeds upon the earth ; but at dawn of that day, a large 

 party of hungry savages, with four of the Hottentots on horseback, 

 having accompanied us across the Mariqua in search of elands, which 

 were reported to be numerous in the neighborhood, we formed a long 

 line, and, having drawn a great extent of country blank, divided into 

 two parties, Richardson keeping the right, and myself to the left. 

 Beginning, at length, to despair of success, I had shot a hartebeeste 

 for the savages, when an object, which had repeatedly attracted my 

 eye, but which I had as often persuaded myself was nothing more 

 than the branchless stump of some withered tree, suddenly shifted 

 its position, and the next moment I distinctly perceived that singular 

 form of which the apparition had ofttimes visited my slumbers, but 

 upon whose reality I now gtzed for the first time. Gliding rapidly 

 among the trees, above the topmost bran ues, of many f which its 



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