Vlll INTRODUCTORT SKETCH OF THE AtJTHOR. 



India he hunted tigers, buffaloes, and wild elephants, and 

 would no doubt have attained a reputation for tiger-shooting 

 equal to that of Gerard, the Algerian lion-hunter, had not the 

 climate proved prejudicial to his constitution. For this reason 

 he retired from the service and returned home, where he 

 resumed his old pastime of deer-stalking on the Scottish hills. 

 But he was a born savage, and after the taste of fiercer and 

 nobler game which he had enjoyed, soon grew weary of such 

 tame and secure sport. He longed for the imrestrained free- 

 dom of the wilderness, and we soon find him procuring a 

 commission in the Royal Veteran Newfoundland Companies, 

 with the idea that he would thus be brought nearer to the 

 " ravages" of the Moose, and the pasture- grounds of the Bison. 

 He soon found, however, that his opportunities of hunting 

 even the caribou, or reindeer — almost the only game in New- 

 foundland — were very small, and he finally effected an 

 exchange into the Cape Riflemen, and in 1843 returned to 

 South Africa and entered upon that career which is recorded 

 in the following pages. 



While attached to the Riflemen he accompanied a military 

 expedition into the country of the Amaponda Cafl'res, and 

 there formed the design of devoting himself to the chase and 

 penetrating into those rich hunting-grounds to the north, 

 where the crack of the English rifle had never yet been 

 heard. Selling out his commission, he procured the outfit 

 of a pioneer, and commenced the barbaric, adventurous life 

 of a hunter, which in the course of five years yielded him 

 trophies sufficient to freight a vessel. During this time he 

 was not only a hunter, but an explorer. In the summer of 

 1844 he penetrated to the Baraangwato Mountains, in lat. 



