PREFACE ix 



its primaeval possessors whether wild men or wild beasts. 

 Twenty years ago a similar remark applied to British 

 East or the Kenya Colony as we must now call it. 

 To-day, though splendid hunting-fields therein remain 

 untouched, yet the Uganda railway has opened those 

 healthier highlands to white settlers and colonists 

 fortunate, that, for Civilisation and the Empire. Such, 

 however, can hardly occur in the Sudan, which, although 

 capable of infinite development, will never become a 

 "White Man's Land." 



Over all South Africa, over hunting-fields where 

 within a century, Cornwallis Harris, Gordon-Cumming, 

 Baldwin, Oswell, and within my own day SELOUS 

 achieved exploits that can never be repeated, flaunts 

 that sinister writing on the wall, Ichabod. In my Sudan, 

 primaeval conditions continue absolutely unchanged ; and 

 grateful indeed is the Author that to him it has been 

 granted, both there and in Equatoria, to witness those 

 glorious scenes during seven strenuous expeditions to 

 the Heart of Africa. 



In conclusion, may I add that these Sudan expeditions 

 complete a tale of fifty-four overseas ventures carried 

 out during half a century 1869-1921 all inspired 

 primarily, and many exclusively, by innate love of this 

 Study of Wild Nature and by a ceaseless ambition to 

 perfect personal acquaintance with ever more and more 

 of her creatures always, for choice, with those whose 

 natures savage, shy, or reclusive render them the most 

 intolerant of human prying into their secret lives. May 

 this book serve to stimulate and to reinvigorate this, 

 the grandest (yet the most neglected) of field-pursuits 

 THE STUDY OF WILD NATURE on living: lines. 



ABEL CHAPMAN. 

 HOUXTY, WARK, 



NORTHUMBERLAND, May 23, 1921. 



