CHAPTER X 



BOOKS ON BIG GAME 



THE nineteenth century was, beyond all others, the 

 century of big game hunters, and of books about big 

 game. From the days of Nimrod to our own there have 

 been mighty hunters before the Lord, and most warlike 

 and masterful races have taken kindly to the chase, as 

 chief among those rough pastimes which appeal naturally 

 to men with plenty of red blood in their veins. But until 

 the nineteenth century the difficulties of travel were so 

 great that men of our race with a taste for sport could 

 rarely gratify this taste except in their own neighborhood. 

 The earlier among the great conquering kings of Egypt 

 and Assyria, when they made their forays into Syria and 

 the region of the Upper Euphrates, hunted the elephant 

 and the wild bull, as well as the lions with which the 

 country swarmed; and Tiglath-Pileser the First, as over- 

 lord of Phoenicia, embarked on the Mediterranean, and 

 there killed a " sea-monster," presumably a whale a feat 

 which has been paralleled by no sport-loving sovereign 

 of modern times, save by that stout hunter, the German 

 Kaiser; though I believe the present English King, like 

 several members of his family, has slain both elephants 

 and tigers before he came to the throne. But the ele- 



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