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and the contents thrust into the barrel together with the 

 paper covering. It shot very accurately, with but little 

 recoil, up to fifty yards, and it was seldom that Oswell 

 fired at a longer range. For his method was to ride up 

 close to his game, and, regardless of the increased personal 

 risk, deliver his shot at a distance of ten or fifteen paces, 

 when it was sure to prove fatal. 



One other trait in his character I would note before 

 I leave him, and that was his unfailing patience with the 

 natives and consideration of their feelings. " I never," 

 he says, " had occasion to raise a hand against a native, 

 and my foot only once, when I found a long, lazy fellow 

 poking his paw into my sugar-tin." The result was that 

 the black men loved and respected him, and he was able 

 to boast that he had never lost anything by theft. 

 Valuable tusks of elephants, shot eighty miles from the 

 waggons, were always punctiliously delivered to him- 

 And yet he never submitted to an insult and insisted 

 upon having proper respect paid to him. " One chief, 

 and one only," he says, " wanted to hector a little, but he 

 soon gave it up. And with the rest of the potentates 

 and people generally I was certainly a persona grata, for 

 I filled their stomachs, and thus, as they assured me, in 

 some mysterious way made their hearts white." In his 

 later years he wrote : " I am sorry now for all the fine 

 old beasts I have killed ; but I was young then, there 

 was excitement in the work, I had large numbers of men 

 to feed, and if these are not considered sound excuses 

 for slaughter, the regret is lightened by the knowledge 

 that every animal, save three elephants, was eaten by 

 man and so put to a good use." 



