4 THROUGH ANGOLA 



by wood and stream the life of bird and beast, 

 back to bush life with all its charms, and to the 

 great peace and silence of the jungle. 



In the weary war years, one had dreamed 

 many hunting dreams. I was again in the lands 

 of the dwarf elephant and the pygmy hippo, or 

 hunting the gorilla in the Cameroons, and the 

 elephant in the Congo. Then would come that 

 longing to go back to the Barue and make sure 

 if the rumour of its white rhino was true, or to 

 know if that record giant eland, met years ago, 

 still roamed near the Bakoy River in Senegambia. 

 Though the foolish stories of the Brontosaurus of 

 Banguelo could never tempt one back to these 

 swamps, yet I did wonder whether a friend's story 

 of a new animal, half-hog, half-deer, possibly an 

 African babaroussa, was worth following to the 

 wilds of West and Central Africa. But all these 

 old haunts were too unhealthy for a war-worn 

 man ; to return to Canada or Sardinia was not 

 to escape civilization, and all hope of an expedition 

 planned to Siberia and the Kadiac Islands was 

 abandoned through transport and other difficulties. 

 Then I remembered what Captain Varian had told 

 me in France in 1917 of a little-known country 

 called Angola, which I remembered only as the 

 land of Livingstone's first great African journey, 

 and of a new antelope, the giant sable, which lived 

 in healthy highlands, and it was to follow again my 

 hero's footsteps, and for photographs and speci- 

 mens of this rare animal, that I went to Angola. 



The common sable (Ilippotragus niger) has a 

 shoulder height of 13 hands in the bull, and some- 



