In Wildest Africa -^ 



Sjostedt/ the Swedish naturalist, who lately visited these 

 lakes, that the hippopotami, who had made the lakes 

 their home since dim far-off times, have almost dis- 

 appeared. The Boers ^ have killed everything. I came 

 upon one here some years ago who was killing a lot of 

 the hippopotami ; others have followed up the work of 

 this forerunner with more serious results. Attempts to 

 make settlers at home in primitive regions are almost 

 always inconsistent with a protection of the primitive 

 animal world, even though these animals inhabit lonely 

 upland lakes, hidden away in the wilderness, far from 



human settlements. 



# * * # * 



Thus in memory picture follows picture. 

 • Besides the harmonies of the wilderness, the impres- 

 sions of the eye are always those that come back 

 alluringly in my recollections. However truly the artist 

 may be able to reproduce all these various impressions, 

 there is one kind that will always be missing from his 

 pictures, namely, all the fleeting movement. To take 



1 Cf. also Prof. Yngwe Sjostedt on the destruction of wild animals 

 by the Boers in the Kilimanjaro district, in the Tdglichen Rundschau^ 

 Berlin, 1906. Professor Sjostedt travelled through these districts for 

 the purpose of making a collection of their fauna for the Copenhagen 

 Museum, and visited the Merker Lakes with a view to securing a 

 hippopotamus. 



2 The destruction of wild animals by the Boers in the Kilimanjaro 

 district was in every way opposed by the central and local authorities, 

 but failing the possibility of strict control it does not seem to have 

 been possible to make the regulations effective. Prof. Sjostedt found the 

 Boers in no way settled down, but roving about the country in pursuit 

 of the wild animals. 



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