CHAPTER XXV. 



HUNTING ELEPHANTS IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



BUT the " Hunter-Naturalist" is not confined to the " wild 

 scenes" of our young continent. There yet remain upon the 

 oldest continent of the Old World "Realms of Ancient 

 Solitude" as vast, as savage, as difficult of penetration ; where 

 action as wild, and passions as uncontrolled as those we 

 have been witnessing and depicting, find "verge and room 

 enough." 



The same audacious spirit of inquiry and passionate aban- 

 don of taste, which has characterized the half-scientific, 

 half-Nomadic explorer here, has carried, in some stage of 

 development, the " Hunter-Naturalist" in whatever direction 

 the empire-measuring eye of Britain has been turned, forward 

 as the " surveyor," in advance of chain and staff, to explore, 

 of his own free will, and report of his own free fancy, concern- 

 ing the prospective riches of these remote lands. 



Thus a new class of adventurers has grown up under the 

 far-seeing policy, first of the Honorable East India Company, 

 and afterwards, perforce of example, under the general 

 military administration of British colonial affairs, which 

 aspires at once to combine all characteristics of the Boones 

 and Audubons of our history. The stories of tiger hunting 

 on elephants by officers of the British army, which have for so 

 long constituted the staple of savage romance in that direction, 

 as to render their details now superlatively stale, have yet 

 had their effect in developing this new British type, though 

 it be but a secondary one ; yet the lawless magnificence of 



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