Sir Samuel White Baker 



IF I were asked to name the greatest sportsman of the 

 nineteenth century I should have little hesitation in 

 conferring that distinction upon Sir Samuel Baker. 

 I use the word sportsman in its highest sense, and I say 

 that in his love of true sport and in his fearless enjoy- 

 ment of the perils as well as the pleasures of the chase 

 Sir Samuel Baker has had certainly no superior, and 

 I think but two equals. William Cotton Oswell and 

 Frederick Courtenay Selous I rank as his peers in 

 daring and skill, but he eclipsed them both in the 

 varied nature of his experiences and in the cosmopoli- 

 tanism (if I may use the word in this connection) of his 

 sport. Baker was, of course, much more than a sports- 

 man he was a great administrator and explorer; but 

 though I shall refer to those phases of his career, it is 

 as a sportsman primarily that I give him a place in 

 these pages. It was his love of sport which led him 

 to leave England and rove in far-off lands ; but for 

 that incentive to travel he might never have found 

 the greater work which has made his name famous. 

 Samuel Baker came of a race of rovers, though 



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