THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY 7 



countries — indeed, it would be difficult even to convey 

 a faint idea of its abundance to one who had never seen 

 it — but in a rough way they are well known, they have 

 all been more or less hunted, and conditions have been 

 to a greater or lesser degree modified by the white man 

 and his rifle. 



Now I think you will all bear me out that from earli- 

 est boyhood the one regret that oftenest visits every 

 true sportsman is that he has lived so late, that he has 

 not been able to see with his own eyes the great game 

 fields as we read about them in the days of their abun- 

 dance. It is an academic regret, of course. Such 

 things are not for him. Trappers' tales of when the 

 deer used to be abundant on Burnt Creek; old men's 

 stories of shooting game where the city hall now stands ; 

 the pages of days gone by in the book of years — we listen 

 and read and sigh a little regretfully. 



At least that is what I had always thought. Then 

 in 1 9 10 I undertook a rather long journey into the game 

 fields of British East Africa. There I found the reports 

 not at aU exaggerated. The game was present in its 

 hundreds, its thousands. If I had done what most 

 people do — hunted for a few months and gone away — 

 I should have felt the fullness of complete satisfaction ; 

 should have carried home with me the realization, the 

 wondering realization, that after all I had lived not 

 too late for the old conditions. But I stayed. I be- 

 came acquainted with old-timers; I pushed out into 



