566 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



covered my legs and arms with blood long before I had killed 

 the giraffe. I rode as usual in the kilt, with my arms bare 

 to my shoulder. It was Chapelpark of Badenoch's old gray 

 kilt, but in this chase it received a death blow which it never 

 afterwards recovered. 



Now comes Harris's story and between them we shall get 

 a pretty clear idea of the sensation of killing the first giraffe. 

 He says : 



To the sportsman, the most thrilling passage in my adven- 

 tures is now to be recounted. In my own breast, it awakens 

 a renewal of past impressions, more lively than any written 

 description can render intelligible ; and far abler pens than 

 mine, dipped in more glowing tints, would still fall short of 

 the reality, and leave much to be supplied by the imagination. 

 Three hundred gigantic elephants, browsing in majestic tran- 

 quillity amidst the wild magnificence of an African landscape, 

 and a wide stretching plain, darkened, far as the eye can 

 reach, with a moving phalanx of gnoos and quaggas, whose 

 numbers literally baffle computation, are sights but rarely to 

 be witnessed; but who amongst our brother Nimrods shall 

 hear of riding familiarly by the side of a troop of colossal 

 giraffes, and not feel his spirit stirred within him ? He that 

 would behold so marvellous a sight must leave the haunts of 

 man, and dive, as we did, into pathless wilds, traversed only 

 by the brute creation into wide wastes, where the grim lion 

 prowls, monarch of all he surveys, and where the gaunt hyaena 

 and wild dog fearlessly pursue their prey. 



Many days had now elapsed since we had even seen the 

 camelopard and then only in small numbers, and under the 

 most unfavorable circumstances. The blood coursed through 

 my veins like quicksilver ; therefore, as on the morning of the 

 10th, from the back of Breslar, my most trusty steed, with a 

 firm wooded plain before me, I counted thirty-two of these 

 animals, industriously stretching their peacock necks to crop 

 the tiny leaves which fluttered above their heads, in a mimosa 



