Sir Samuel Mbttc JBaftcr 571 



was rendered abortive almost immediately upon impact. 

 The danger of such a bullet was manifest ; it was almost 

 as hollow as a hat, and almost as harmless as a hat 

 would be if thrown at a charging tiger." 



Sir Samuel Baker's experience of big game shooting 

 was so varied, comprising as it did sporting tour> in 

 Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America, that one is 

 bewildered with the wealth of material for quotation. 

 And then it was not only with rifle and gun that he 

 bagged his quarry. He was a hunter in the widest 

 sense of the word. There was nothing he loved better 

 than hunting elk and boar on foot with hounds, himself 

 armed only with a hunting-knife. In his stirring book 

 " Rifle and Hound in Ceylon " he thus describes his 

 favourite sport : 



" Thoroughly sound in wind and limb, with no super- 

 fluous flesh, must be the man who would follow the 

 hounds in this wild country through jungles, rivers, 

 plains and deep ravines, sometimes from sunrise to 

 sunset without tasting food since the previous evening, 

 with the exception of a cup of coffee and a piece of toast 

 before starting. It is trying work, but it is a noble sport ; 

 no weapon but the hunting-knife, no certainty as to the 

 character of the game that may be found, it may be 

 either an elk or a boar or a leopard, and yet the knife and 

 the good hounds are all that can be trusted in." 



In his strong hands the hunting-knife was a terrible 

 weapon. His favourite couteau de cJiasse was made, he 

 tells us, of a portion of real old Andrea Ferrara Highland 

 claymore, the blade was 1 8 inches in length and 2 inches 

 in width, about 3 Ibs. in weight, double-edged, and 



