1 8 After Big Game in Central Africa 



that I counted upon them still. I have often spoken 

 of these fine fellows in Mes Grandes Chasses, but I 

 can never say enough of the services which they have 

 rendered me. Their lives have been so intimately 

 connected with my own life, they have shown me so 

 many marks of attachment, that I cannot forget them 

 at the opening of this narrative, in which their share 

 of glory and of danger equals mine, and in which 

 we shall be together always, working with a common 

 object. In the course of these seven years of sport 

 not an animal has been killed without my hunters 

 having contributed to the result singly or con- 

 jointly; there is not a joy or a triumph in which 

 they have not had their part, not a difficulty which 

 they have not undergone with their master. True, 

 they did not kill with the rifle; but, after having 

 taught me how to track game, they assisted me in 

 my researches. And, in my marked position of in- 

 feriority, if one compares the means at my disposal 

 with those of sportsmen of Central Africa Gordon- 

 Gumming, Drummond, Selous, and many others, who 

 hunt with bushmen, spare horses and dogs, often in 

 countries where the difficulties are not great, it is 

 thanks to the sagacity of my native hunters, thanks 

 to their astonishing instinct for the life of the 

 woods an instinct with which they partly have 

 endowed me that, without other assistants than 

 they, I have killed almost as many animals as 

 the Nimrods of former times. They have left their 

 countries, their families, their wives, and their 

 children, to follow me when I have changed my 



