WITH FLASH-LIGHT AND RIFLE 



read the truthful report of a Schweinfurth and a Richard 

 Boehm, the German travellers, and of reliable travellers 

 of other nations, some of whom have been able to en- 

 rich their text by original sketches and pictures. 



But absolutely trustworthy documents, in the form 

 of photographs, were still lacking. 



On my first expedition, in 1896, into the steppes of 

 Central Africa, the wish arose within me to fix the 

 powerful and glorious impressions which I received and 

 to pass them on to others. I felt, at the same time, 

 that this had to be done speedily, in view of the rapid 

 destruction of the wild animals wrought by the advance 

 of our civilization. How could I do it? There was the 

 rul). I was neither an artist capable of sketching the 

 wonders which the eye had espied, nor did I feel that I 

 possessed the gift to voice by word-pictures, by graphic 

 description, the revelations that had come to me in 

 that glorious virgin world. Richard Boehm, who in 

 1884 succumbed on the shore of the far-away Upaemba 

 Lake to a treacherous fever, and Kuhnert had been 

 able, as competent artists, to reproduce, on a small 

 scale, the scenes they had witnessed. But what lay- 

 man would believe the representation of those gigantic 

 masses of animals in the interior of Africa to be true if 

 an artist-traveller could fix them on paper or canvas? 



The art of the photographer alone, it seemed to me, 

 could furnish the means to accomplish this end. The 

 actual means were, however, limited; the difficulties 



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