CHAPTER XXV. 
HUNTING ELEPHANTS IN SOUTH AFRICA. 
But the “ Hunter-Naturalist”’ is not confined to the “ wild 
scenes” of our young continent. There yet remain upon the 
oldest continent of the Old World “Realms of Ancient 
Solitude” as vast, as savage, as difficult of penetration; where 
action as wild, and passions as uncontrolled as those we 
have been witnessing and depicting, find “verge and room 
enough.” 
The same audacious spirit of inquiry and passionate aban- 
don of taste, which has characterized the half-scientific, 
half-Nomadic explorer here, has carried, in some stage of 
development, the “‘ Hunter-Naturalist” in whatever direction 
the empire-measuring eye of Britain has been turned, forward 
as the “surveyor,” in advance of chain and staff, to explore, 
of his own free will, and report of his own free fancy, concern- 
ing the prospective riches of these remote lands. 
Thus a new class of adventurers has grown up under the 
far-seeing policy, first of the Honorable East India Company, 
and afterwards, perforce of example, under the general 
military administration of British colonial affairs, which 
aspires at once to combine all characteristics of the Boones 
and Audubons of our history. The stories of tiger hunting 
on elephants by officers of the British army, which have for so 
long constituted the staple of savage romance in that direction, 
as to render their details now superlatively stale, have yet 
had their effect in developing this new British type, though 
it be but a secondary one; yet the lawless magnificence of 
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