CHAPTER I 



THE QUEST OF THE GIANT SAP.LE ENGLAND TO 

 MADEIRA THE WILD GOATS or THE DESERTAS 



N the voyage to Angola, in April 1920, a 

 Portuguese judge gravely told me that 

 no countryman of his would be considered 

 sane if, after live years of the hazards and dis- 

 comforts of war, he set out at once for a year of 

 life in the African wilds. He added equally 

 gravely that of course Englishmen could not be 

 judged by any ordinary standard. And yet there 

 was great happiness for me in going back to so- 

 called savage Africa, from which, as the ancients 

 said, came ever something new ; where, unknown 

 to modern history, was once an ancient civilization, 

 recorded to-day in legends of long-gone empires, 

 and the relics of a culture coeval with the more 

 ancient States of Europe and Asia. 



I was happy to go back to a land where any 

 day of march or search might bring some such 

 record of these far yesterdays of the human 

 African story, as it could bring something new 

 of its wonderful animal life ; looked forward to 

 those evenings by the camp fire where the old 

 men spoke of legend, and the young men of animal 

 lore. There was happiness in going back to watch 



