362 fangs of tbe 1Rofc, IRifle, anfc (Bun 



William Cotton Oswell was the last Englishman left 

 who could describe from personal experience that 

 wonderful South Africa of fifty years ago, with its vast 

 solitudes untrodden by European foot, and its wide 

 plains of pasture-land peopled with myriads of wild 

 animals. Boers, gold-seekers, diamond-miners, experi- 

 mental farmers have utterly changed the face of the 

 country which Oswell found teeming with a hundred 

 varieties of big game. Houses stand where he once shot 

 elephants ; railways have already begun to whistle and 

 scream through his old hunting-fields. You may travel 

 for days without seeing a solitary wild creature where 

 Oswell saw elephants, lions, buffaloes, rhinoceroses, and 

 antelopes without number. But, though the game has 

 gone, there still lingers among the Kafirs and bushmen 

 the memory of the great white hunter who was as kind 

 as he was brave, who faced a fighting chieftain or a 

 charging elephant with the same fearless composure, 

 who was never known to raise his hand in anger against 

 the humblest of his servants, who had that true nobility 

 which rises superior to caste and recognises that manli- 

 ness, courage, and faithfulness, wherever found, form a 

 bond of universal brotherhood. 



