HUNTING COMPANIONS 297 



store of amusement in gaining your people's 

 confidence, and learning the many useful and 

 entertaining lessons of woodcraft and folk-lore 

 which these good-natured children of the wilds 

 delight to teach you, and, finally, you are face 

 to face with Nature at her grandest and most 

 impressive. If any other reason were wanting, 

 it would be found in the fact of the extreme 

 rarity of a really congenial and at the same time 

 hard-working feUow-sportsman. You may meet 

 a man in town or country at home three hundred 

 and sixty-five times dvu-ing the year, and feel 

 that he is the most delightful person of your 

 acquaintance. So he may be so long as he 

 remains at home. But let him be your sole 

 daily companion for a number of months in the 

 interior of Africa, and if your friendship con- 

 tinue unimpaired yours is of a truth a rare enough 

 case. I will not say more than this ; but every 

 man who has himted or travelled with a com- 

 panion of his own nationality and colour in 

 the siuToundings I am endeavouring to describe, 

 wiQ immediately comprehend my meaning, and 

 realise to the full the diflBcidt situations which 

 so constantly arise. ^ly advice, therefore, to 

 persons contemplating hunting in pairs is to 

 make separate camps, wide enough apart to 

 render unlikely any encroachment of the one 

 into the country shot over by the other. Meet- 

 ings may take place once a week or oftener, 

 when there will be far more to discuss than would 

 arise if the association remained unbroken 

 throughout. In these circumstances each man 



