326 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



of the chase ; but it surpassed India in the countless num- 

 bers of the individual animals, and in the wild and un- 

 known nature of the hunting-grounds, while the climate 

 and surroundings made the conditions under which the 

 hunter worked pleasanter and healthier than those in 

 any other land. 



South Africa was the true hunter's paradise. If the 

 happy hunting-grounds were to be found anywhere in 

 this world, they lay between the Orange and the Zambesi, 

 and extended northward here and there to the Nile coun- 

 tries and Somaliland. Nowhere else were there such 

 multitudes of game, representing so many and such widely 

 different kinds of animals, of such size, such beauty, such 

 infinite variety. We should have to go back to the fauna 

 of the Pleistocene to find its equal. Never before did 

 men enjoy such hunting as fell to the lot of those roving 

 adventurers, who first penetrated its hidden fastnesses, 

 camped by its shrunken rivers, and galloped over its sun- 

 scorched wastes; and, alas that it should be written, no 

 man will ever see the like again. Fortunately, its mem- 

 ory will forever be kept alive in some of the books that 

 the great hunters have written about it, such as Cornwallis 

 Harris' " Wild Sports of South Africa," Gordon-Cum- 

 ming's " Hunter's Life in South Africa," Baldwin's 

 " African Hunting," Drummond's " Large Game and 

 Natural History of South Africa," and, best of all, 

 Selous' two books, " A Hunter's Wanderings in South 

 Africa " and " Travel and Adventure in Southeast 

 Africa." Selous was the last of the great hunters of 

 South Africa, and no other has left books of such value 



