AFEICA— SOUTH AND EAST 3 



my hope to see for myself. I voyaged homewards — 

 forced by the war to the long sea route by Mozambique 

 and Madagascar — oppressed by a brooding sentiment 

 that I had lived too late, that those glorious scenes 

 described by old-time pioneers had vanished for ever 

 from the face of the earth. 



These gloomy forebodings have fortunately proved 

 baseless — have been scattered to the four winds by events 

 that followed. South Africa as a virgin hunting-field 

 exists no longer ; yet such spectacles of wild-life as fifty 

 years ago adorned its veld and karoo, with all the glory 

 of a pristine fauna every whit as rich, may yet be 

 enjoyed elsewhere in that vast continent. It is no 

 longer to the regions beyond the Zambesi that the 

 hunter must turn attention — those regions where Mr. 

 Selous in my own time (since we were at Rugby together 

 in the 'sixties) has earned pre-eminence among naturalist- 

 hunters of all ages. No, the centre of attraction has 

 shifted northwards, far northward — to the British terri- 

 tories that lie around the equator. There some of 

 Nature's wildest scenes, practically unchanged since the 

 days of creation, may yet be enjoyed. More than that. 

 These new regions are accessible as South Africa never 

 was at its zenith ; for these new hunting-grounds are 

 reached by steam all the way, on land and sea — a simple 

 three- weeks' journey by ocean liner and corridor train. 



That this renewal of virgin conditions which, it 

 seemed, had disappeared for ever, should, after all, 

 have been renewed to another century, followed on the 

 opening-up of the Uganda railw\ay. That narrow ribbon 

 of steel (though it never reaches Uganda) pierces for 

 600 miles the heart of Equatorial Africa. After leaving 

 behind the coastal belt of forest and swamp, it sur- 

 mounts a 6,000-foot mountain-range and traverses all 

 the vast tablelands beyond, afibrding a tropical pano- 

 rama that must be seen to be believed. Never before, 

 nor ever again (it is safe to say) will there be pre- 

 sented to the view of casual passenger such spectacles 

 as to-day attend each train on that Uganda railway. 



