In Wildest Africa -^ 



giraffe itself was to be found in large herds in many parts 

 of Africa. The first giraffe of which we know appeared 

 in the Roman arena. About two hundred years ago we 

 are told some specimens were brought over to Europe, and 

 caused much astonishment. The Nubian menageries some 

 years ago brought a goodly number of the strange beasts 

 to our zoological gardens.^ But how many people have 

 seen giraffes in their native haunts ? When, in 1896, I saw 

 them thus for the first time, I realised how thin and 

 wretched our captive specimens are by the side of the 

 splendid creatures of the velt. Le Vaillant, in his accounts 

 of his travels in Cape Colony and the country known to-day 

 as German South-West Africa, gives a spirited description 

 of these animals, and tells how after much labour and 

 trouble he managed to take a carefully dried skin to the 

 coast and to send it to Germany. That was seventy years 

 ago. Since then many Europeans have seen giraffes, but 

 they have told us very little about them. The German 

 explorer Dr. Richard Bohm has given us wonderfully 

 accurate information about them and their ways. But the 

 beautiful water-colours so excellently drawn by a hand so 

 soon to be disabled in Africa, were lost in that dreadful 

 conflagration in which his hunting-box on the peaceful Wala 

 River and most of his diaries were destroyed. Dr. Richard 

 Kandt, whilst on his expeditions in search of the sources 

 of the Nile, found the charred remains of the hut. " Ubi 

 sunt, qui ante nos in mundo fuere ? " 



Zoological experts tell us that there are several species 



^ The well-known naturalist, Hagenbeck, remembers the immense 

 numbers of giraffes which were bagged in the Sudan some thirty years ago. 



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