MY VOCATION. 1*79 



forest to bear witness to the deed, save the great God who is 

 over us all. 



One more avowal to the reader before I finish my reflec- 

 tions. It is that I have often remarked a great analogy between 

 my family in its ruin, and that of the Arab devastated by 

 the lion, and left without cattle or chief. 



It is not easy to understand my feelings when I was sum- 

 moned, as I often have been, to the aid of a family that had 

 been attacked by the lion, when I found the women under the 

 the tents weeping and praying, the children, too young to 

 understand what they had lost, and the old men regretting 

 the strength of their youth that had gone, before the ardor of 

 battle had died in their veins. 



I have heard a youth calling to the women to keep silence — 

 a youth whose tender cheeks were yet soft with his mother's 

 kisses ; who, flushed with grief for the loss of a father who had 

 been carried off by a lion on the previous evening, would ex- 

 claim, " Keep your tears and mourning for the morrow ; to- 

 day, it is blood that we want to revenge my father. Where 

 are his arms, give them to me that I may go ?" 



But let us not anticipate. This hunting history was written 

 day by day, and act by act, and each episode will be found 

 in its regular order. We will commence with my profession, 

 and a few words in relation to my first entry in Africa. 



Whenever I meet in the streets one of those companies of 

 mimic soldiery, where childhood's curls are covered with 

 paper hats, and boyish figures straighten themselves under 

 the martial tinkle of wooden sword and gun, and tin- 

 pail drum, I pause involuntarily to watch the manoeuvres, and 



