In Wildest Africa ^ 



Beyond the glow of the camp-fire our eyes cannot 

 travel — we cannot see what is happening outside the camp, 

 even quite close at hand. This intensifies one's feeling of 

 insecurity, for I know well how suddenly and with what 

 lightning speed the great felines manage their attacks. It 

 is in just such circumstances that so many men fall victims 

 to lion and leopard. One evening a leopard will snatch a 

 small dog from your feet, the next it will carry off one of 

 the native women before the eyes of the whole population 

 of your camp. You must have had such things happen 

 to you, or hear of them from eye-witnesses, to realise 

 the danger. 



Near my tent stand two hoary old trees all hung with 

 creepers. In the uncertain firelight they seem to be 

 a-quiver with life, and they throw phantom-like shadows. 

 I hear the soft footsteps of the watch — they recall me to 

 actualities. Now the moon emerges, and suddenly sheds 

 its brilliant radiance over the entire velt. It is like the 

 withdrawing of a pall. My thoughts wander away upon 

 the moonbeams, and travel on and on, over land and sea, 

 like homing birds. . . . The reader who would steep himself 

 in the beauty and strangeness of this African camp-life 

 should turn to the pages of that splendid work Caput 

 Niliy by my friend Richard Kandt. There he will find 

 it all described by a master-hand in a series of exquisite 

 nature-pictures. In language full of poetic beauty he 

 gives us the very soul of the wilderness. These studies 

 and sketches, from the pen of the man who discovered the 

 sources of the Nile, are a veritable work of art. It is 

 easier for the nature-lover to give himself up to the 



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