HUNTING IN AFRICA 107 
I remember a friend of mine, who had spent three months 
in Rhodesia, showing me the result of his trip with pride. 
I was ignorant then of African game, and so was duly 
impressed. I know, now, there was scarcely one head in 
the lot worth keeping. 
He, however, only brought back what he had shot 
himself, for he was a good sportsman; but the truth is, 
very many of the bags reported are not made by the men 
returning them. ‘The professional hunter does much of 
the shooting, and not seldom skins, tusks, and horns, are 
bought. It is not hard to forget (at least, some seem to 
find it easy) what you yourself have or have not shot. 
But is that sort of thing sport? I am not speaking 
from haphazard hearsay, but from things that I know. 
I have often seen a would-be salmon fisher on our own 
rivers, sit reading a novel hour after hour, day after day, 
in his canoe, while his expert Indian threw a good fly 
over his shoulder. When the fish was hooked then the 
sportsman played it, and landed or lost it as the case might 
be. It takes more than money to make a sportsman. 
Enough said perhaps on an unpleasant subject. 
In the second place, game is not at all as plentiful as it 
was even in Africa. You cannot expect to stroll out of 
camp about eight o’clock, after a late and heavy breakfast 
and run across what you came out to get. A few years 
ago the Athi Plains were almost a sure find for lions. I 
do not believe that to-day one sefari in five gets a lion at 
allonthem. ‘There were a dozen places where with reason- 
able industry you at least had a chance to get a fifty pound 
elephant tusk. Now you may visit them one after the other 
and never see a reasonable tusker. It is the same story 
with rhino. Five years ago anyone could within a radius 
of thirty miles of Nairobi, make sure of securing his two 
heads, with horns measuring over twenty inches. Now 
rhino scarcely exists in that vicinity at all, and you may 
