AFRICAN SMALL GAME. 607 



reality, according to their own showing, nothing more than 

 "what we term " bushy woodlands" — being groves of mimosa 

 bushes or shrubs, eighteen or nineteen feet in height, on the 

 tops of which the giraffe is represented as browsing. It 

 sounds about as droll to a backwoodsman's ears to hear these 

 shrubs called forest trees, as it would to hear a herd of three 

 thousand buffaloes called "vast," when armies of hundreds 

 of thousands, or even millions, are by no means considered 

 either extraordinary or unusual on our plains. Things are 

 comparative in more ways than one ; and although the 

 African buffalo may stand higher on its legs than our bison, 

 the bulk is certainly not greater. And as for the petty herds 

 in which it moves, expressing anything of that indescribable 

 grandeur with which the American animal is poured along in 

 countless shaggy legions over trembling plains, the very idea 

 of comparison is like that of a mill-tail to Niagara ; or the 

 dangers of shooting cowardly lions, helpless sea-cows, 

 peaceful elephants and harmless giraffes, amidst the stupid, 

 poorly armed, half-monkey tribes of Africa, accompanied 

 by huge wains, lumbered with the luxuries of wines, cigars, 

 tea, coffee and bread, — with the perils to be faced by the 

 wild border hunter of America ! 



Mounted on his mustang, with the occasional luxury of 

 a pack mule and coffee and sugar for the first week out, 

 the Borderer will traverse thousands of miles alone, armed 

 with rifle and knife, through desert regions, scour . by 

 the fiercest, most cruel, the best mounted Nomads in the 

 world, whom he must baffle wile with wile and force by 

 force — will meet, single-handed, the terrible Grisly Bear 

 that knows no panic, and cannot be turned aside uhen 

 roused, even by fire — or cross, unscathed, the thundering 

 track of myriad Bisons ; and think himself very lucky, if, 

 at the end of a year or two, after having eaten up his 

 saddle skirts and made soup of his moccasins some half 

 dozen times — he gets back to a trading post or settlement, 



