SOUTHERN AFRICA. 195 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



HUNTING THE CAMELOPARD^ OR GIRAFFE. 



To the sportsman^ the most thriUiiio- passag-e in m}' adven- 

 tures is now to be recounted. In ni}^ 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 g-lowing- tints^ would still fall short 

 of the reality, and leave much to be supplied by the ima- 

 gination. Three hundred g'ig-antic elephants, browsing- in 

 majestic tranquillity amidst the wild mag-nihcence of an 

 African landscape, and a wide stretching- plain, darkened, 

 far as the eye can reach, with a moving- phalanx of g-noos 

 and quag-g-as, whose numbers literal^ baffle computation, 

 are sig-hts 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 sig-ht 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 g-rim lion prowls, monarch of 

 all he surveys, and where the gaunt hjTiena and wild dog- 

 fearlessly pursue their pre}^ 



Many days had noAV elapsed since we had even seen the 

 camelopard — and then only in small numbers, and under 

 the most unfavourable circumstances. The blood coursed 

 through my veins like quicksilver, therefore, as on the morn- 

 ing of the 19th, from the back of Breslar, my most trusty 

 steed, with a firm wooded plain before me, I counted thirt}-- 



2 



