CHAPTER V 
HUNTING IN AFRICA 
THINK I can truthfully say I have always enjoyed 
hunting apart from mere killing—the distinction is 
important. I learned to enjoy and value it for the knowl- 
edge it gave me of a thousand useful and beautiful things, 
and for the opportunties it afforded of studying them. 
I was an overgrown, lanky boy of thirteen when my 
father who was himself a good shot and an accomplished 
horseman, gave me my first gun. It was a 14-bore double- 
barrel shot gun. I remember it cost 410, a large sum for 
him in those days. 
We lived in Ireland, and in Ireland the grammar 
schools keep early hours. I had to be at school at seven 
in the morning, but that gun drew me from my bed at forr; 
and two and a half precious hours I had all to myself 
while the day was young. I was only allowed to kill for food, 
and rabbits brought me sixpence each, wild pigeon, three- 
pence. So I paid for my ammunition at the same time that 
I increased my chest measurement. Every stream, every 
bog, every mountain, within a radius of ten miles (Irish) 
I got to know, and [I learned to love dearly the open air. 
_ Since then I have hunted in many places, Scotland, Austria, 
Sardinia (one of the best places, by the way, in the world 
to hunt in, and no one goes there), in almost all parts 
of the Canadian Rockies, and in our own splendid Alpine 
land, from California to the Canadian line. On the great 
Western plains I spent many months as far back as 1868, 
when no white man came, and the whole country swarmed 
with game. I[ have hunted in the forests and on the barrens 
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