PREFACE ix 



However, for those amiable sympathisers to whom 

 the descriptions of how I killed elephants can have no 

 interest, my account of how one of these animals very 

 nearly killed me may afford pleasure ; and if that should 

 be tempered by disappointment because it was not 

 altogether successful, they may hope that vengeance 

 may yet be consummated. Akin to the heathenish 

 propensity of my early youth above alluded to, was an 

 attempt I remember to have made to get out of sight of 

 houses in a secluded part of a common and fancy myself 

 in an uninhabited country ; and among the prophecies 

 uttered at a later period by observant Kafirs, who noticed 

 the development of my unquenchable thirst for prying 

 further and further into remote wastes, was one to the 

 effect that I should end by dying in a far wilderness, 

 inhabited only by wild beasts, where no smoke could be 

 seen the horizon round. 



It remains only to express my thanks to the artists 



(their names are a pledge for good work), who have 



done their part so much better than I can hope to have 



succeeded in mine, for the painstaking way in which they 



have endeavoured to carry out my ideas — actuated, as 



these have been throughout, by a desire to represent 



every incident truthfully — to Dr. Geo. Kolb, Major 



Eric Smith, Mr. J. R. W. Pigott, and other friends for 



photographs much better than any of my own, and to 



Mr. Rowland Ward for his courteous co-operation. I 



am also indebted to Miss E. M. Bowdler Sharpe for 



arranging and describing my butterflies. Several articles 



of mine which appeared in the Field are incorporated 



in some of the earlier chapters. 



b 



