Trail and Camp-Fire 



VI 



by Mr. Phillipps Wolley — himself a man who has written 

 well of big game hunting in out of the way places, from 

 the Caucasus to the Cascades. These volumes contain 

 pieces by many different authors ; but they differ from 

 most volumes of the kind in that all the writers are trust- 

 worthy and interesting ; though the palm must be given 

 to Oswell's delightful account of his South African 

 hunting. 



In all these books the one point to be insisted on is 

 that a big game hunter has nothing in common with so 

 many of the men who delight to call themselves sports- 

 men. Sir Samuel Baker has left a very amusing record 

 of the horror he felt for the Ceylon sportsmen who, by 

 the term "sport," meant horse-racing instead of elephant 

 shooting. Half a century ago, Gordon Cumming wrote 

 of " the life of the wild hunter, so far preferable to that 

 of the mere sportsman"; and his justification for this 

 somewhat sneering reference to the man who takes his 

 sport in too artificial a manner, may be found in the 

 pages of a then noted authority on such sports as horse- 

 racing and fox-hunting ; for in Apperly's " Nimrod 

 Abroad," in the course of an article on the game of the 

 American wilderness, there occurs this delicious sen- 

 tence : " A damper, however, is thrown over all systems 

 of deerstalking in Canada by the necessity, which is said 

 to be unavoidable, of bivouacking in the woods instead 

 of in well-aired sheets! " Verily, there was a great gulf 

 between the two men. 



In the present century the world has known three great 

 hunting-grounds : Africa, from the equator to the south- 

 ernmost point ; India, both farther and hither ; and 

 North America west of the Mississippi, from the Rio 



316 



