Books on Big Game 



e great 

 south- 

 and 

 le Rio 



Grande to the Arctic Circle. The atter never approached 

 either of the former in the wealth and variety of the 

 species, or in the size and terror of the chief beasts of the 

 chase ; but it surpassed India in the countless numbers 

 of the individual animals, and in the wild and unknown 

 nature of the hunting-grounds. 



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

 happy hunting-grounds were to be found anywhere on 

 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 

 across its sun-scorched wastes; and, alas that it should 

 be written, no man will ever see the like again. Fortun- 

 ately, its memory will forever be kept alive in some of 

 the books that the great hunters have written about it, 

 such as Cornwallis Harris's "Wild Sports of South 

 Africa," Gordon Cumming'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's two books, " A Hunter's Wan- 

 derings in South Africa," and " Travel and Adventure 

 in Southeast Africa." Selous is the last of the great 

 hunters, and no other has left books of such value as his. 



Moreover, the pencil has done its part as well as the 

 pen. Harris, who was the pioneer of all the hunters, 



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