Militant Cotton swell 359 



say "there was something in being able to send for a 

 doctor whom they had not to pay." He was an 

 enthusiastic gardener, and the whole neighbourhood was 

 stocked with flowers and plants from Hillside. His 

 great strength remained to the end. One day, calling at 

 an old friend's, he found him very ill, and his wife and 

 son consulting how he could be moved. In a moment 

 he was in Oswell's arms, carried, and placed gently in 

 the place they had prepared for him. The Paris 

 Geographical Society had sent him their gold medal, and 

 he was made a Fellow of the English Society ; but, 

 writes Francis Galton, another African explorer, and 

 admirer of Oswell, " He was too shy and modest, and 

 could not be induced to take that prominent share in 

 those stirring times of the Geographical Society which 

 was his right, and which he was often urged to take." In 

 the same way, though renowned among his acquaintances 

 as a most graphic and brilliant raconteur, he steadily 

 resisted the offers of publishers and the persuasions of 

 friends to take the public into his confidence in print, 

 till he was induced to contribute to the Badminton 

 volume I have referred to. He had scarcely finished 

 those fascinating pages when his summons came, and on 

 May ist, 1893, he died at the age of seventy-five. 



What William Cotton Oswell was as a hunter the 

 incidents already given will have amply indicated. But 

 I will add the testimony of one or two who knew him 

 to his prowess. Mr. Horace Waller, of the Oxford 

 Mission, writes : " Livingstone, who knew no fear himself, 

 spoke of Oswell's desperate courage in hunting as quite 

 wonderful ; not but what he suffered from it to the day 



