Chvp. XXVII.] SOUTHERN AFRICA. 235 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



HUNTING THE CAMELEOPARD, OR GIRAFFE. 



To the sportsman, the most thrilling passage in my 

 adventures is now to be recounted. In my own 

 breast, it awakens a renewal of past impressions, 

 more lively than any written description can render 

 intelligible ; and far abler pens than mine, dipped 

 in more glowing tints, would still fall short of the 

 reality, and leave much to be supplied by the ima- 

 gination. Three hundred gigantic elephants, brows- 

 ing in majestic tranquillity amidst the wild mag- 

 nificence of an African landscape, and a wide 

 stretching plain, darkened, far as the eye can reach, 

 with a moving phalanx of gnoos and quaggas, whose 

 numbers literally baffle computation, are sights but 

 rarely to be witnessed; but who amongst our brother 

 Nimrods shall hear of riding familiarly by the side 

 of a troop of colossal giraffes, and not feel his spirit 

 stirred within him ? He that would behold so mar- 

 vellous a sight must leave the haunts of man, and 

 dive, as we did, into pathless wilds, traversed only 

 by the brute creation — into wide wastes, where the 

 grim lion prowls, monarch of all he surveys, and 

 where the gavmt hysena and wild dog fearlessly 

 pursue their prey. 



Many days had now elapsed since we had even 

 seen the cameleopard — and then only in small num- 



