4 ON SAFAEI 



Countless herds of h'm wild beasts feed within sioht of 

 carriage windows — brindled gnu and zebra, hartebeests 

 and gazelles, with other antelopes great and small, 

 giraffes and ostriches, even, by chance, a glimpse of 

 rhino, buffalo or lion. But all that is a thrice-told tale. 



It is that unique railway, and the guiding star that 

 led me thereto, that are the fons et origo of this book. 



Far-seeing and inspired was the genius that devised 

 that line and (with the courage of conviction) carried 

 out the scheme in face of the cheap rhetoric and narrow 

 horizons of the hour, bounded to thousands by the 

 corner of the street. Although, for the present, that 

 wild fauna is actually a chief asset of our East- African 

 colony, and the big-game hunter is to-day its most 

 profitable customer, it is nevertheless no mere fantastic 

 dream that pictures the ecjuatorial highlands settled -up 

 within measurable period by British farmers and graziers, 

 the game displaced by flocks and herds, and Mombasa 

 competing with Argentina and the Antipodes for the 

 meat-supply of the Mother-land. 



Save incideutallv, such matters do not here concern 

 us. A feature that gratifies sportsman and nature-lover 

 alike is the treatment of the game in the British Pro- 

 tectorate. The Game-ordinances may not be ideal, nor 

 their execution all we could wish, but they are essen- 

 tially practical, and evince both a wise foresight and 

 a policy that has raised the whole plane of sport, as 

 practised in British territories, to a level that has never 

 elsewhere obtained in the Dark Continent. 



Throughout South Africa hardly even the elementary 

 significance of our British term " sport" was ever under- 

 stood or thought of. AVith some notable exceptions, the 

 mounted rifleman of the south, with his after-rider and 

 repeating Mauser, was merely a butcher, a hunter of 

 hides and meat. I served an apprenticeship there before 

 coming here, and remember with loathing such expres- 

 sions as " wiping the floor " or " cutting stripes through 

 them" applied to some of the finest of animal forms. 

 No sense of respect for game, no admiration of its grace 



