2 ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA chap. 



date seaport town in South Africa, when I first landed there 

 early in 1869 it was a comparatively primitive place. Never- 

 theless I always felt that I had come too late, and listened 

 with envy to the tales of those who were then old colonists 

 about elephants in the Berea ^ bush when they first were 

 " Jimmies " or newcomers. The elephants had been driven 

 far beyond the borders of the colony by the time my foot 

 first sank into the deep sand which served for streets then, 

 and I never overtook them in South Africa. The last buffalo 

 even Natal contained was killed a year or two after my arrival. 

 Not but what I did find my way, during the many years I 

 wandered in South-Eastern Africa, to where the latter were 

 still in possession — big herds of them ; and other game, of 

 every kind peculiar to the country with the one notable ex- 

 ception above mentioned, yet swarmed. Some of those old 

 days might be worth recalling at another time ; but they never 

 satisfied me thoroughly. I hankered after the untouched 

 wilds which I knew still existed in Equatorial Africa : where 

 the elephant yet roamed as in primeval times ; where one 

 would never see the wheel-mark of a Boer's waggon nor hear 

 the report of any gun but one's own. 



But circumstances — largely connected with a certain 

 emptiness of the pocket — kept me back for something like 

 twenty years from attempting to penetrate into the interior 

 of the continent from another and more favourably situated 

 point. Even when in 1888 I made my first passing acquaint- 

 ance with Mombasa (before the days of the Imperial British 

 East Africa Company), as well as other African ports, in the 

 course of a voyage up the east coast, I was deterred by the 

 heavy cost which such an expedition as was said to be neces- 

 sary to enable one to go any distance inland would entail. 

 Two years later I was there (Mombasa) again ; but still the 

 difficulties in the way of making an independent trip after 

 elephants, and the lack of encouragement to undertake it in 



1 The Berea is the fashionable suburb overlooking the harbour. 



