Trail and Camp-Fire 



r[ 



IH ; '»- 



melancholy reed beds of the Guaso Nyiro, and of his 

 return journey, carrying his wounded companion, through 

 regions where the caravan was perpetually charged by 

 rhinoceros, reads like a bit out of the unreckoned ages 

 of the past, before the huge and fierce monsters of old 

 had vanished from the earth, or acknowledged man as 

 their master. Another excellent book of mixed hunting 

 and scientific exploration is Mr. Donaldson Smith's 

 "Through Unknown African Countries." If anything, 

 the hunting part is unduly sacrificed to some of the 

 minor scientific work. Full knowledge of a new breed 

 of rhinoceros, or a full description of the life history and 

 chase of almost any kind of big game, is worth more than 

 any quantity of new spiders and scorpions. Birds and 

 insects remain in the land, and can always be described 

 by the shoal of scientific investigators who follow the 

 first adventurous explorers; but it is only the pioneer 

 hunter who can tell us all about the far more interesting 

 and important beasts of the chase, the different kinds of 

 big game, and especially dangerous big game; and it is a 

 mistake in any way to subordinate the greater work to 

 the lesser. 



Books on big game hunting in India are as plentiful, 

 and as good, as those about Africa. Forsyth's " High- 

 lands of Central India," Sanderson's "Thirteen Years 

 Among the Wild Beasts of India," Shakespeare's "Wild 

 Sports of India," and Kinloch's " Large Game Shooting," 

 are perhaps the best; but there are many other writers, 

 like Baldwin, Rice, Macintyre, and Stone, who are also 

 very good. Indeed, to try to give even the titles of the 

 good books on Indian shooting would make a magazine 

 article read too much like the Homeric catalogue of 



330 





