AFRICAN SMALL GAME. 607 
reality, according to their own showing, nothing more than 
what we term “bushy woodlands”—hbeing groves of mimosa 
bushes or shrubs, eighteen or nineteen feet in height, on the 
tops of which the giraffe is represented as browsing. It 
sounds about as droll to a backwoodsman’s ears to hear these 
shrubs called forest trees, as it would to hear a herd of three 
thousand buffaloes called “vast,” when armies of hundreds 
of thousands, or even millions, are by no means considered 
either extraordinary or unusual on our plains. Things are 
comparative in more ways than one; and although the 
African buffalo may stand higher on its legs than our bison, 
the bulk is certainly not greater. And as for the petty herds 
in which it moves, expressing anything of that indescribable 
grandeur with which the American animal is poured along in 
countless shaggy legions over trembling plains, the very idea 
of comparison is like that of a mill-tail to Niagara; or the 
dangers of shooting cowardly lions, helpless sea-cows, 
peaceful elephants and harmless giraffes, amidst the stupid, 
poorly armed, half-monkey tribes of Africa, accompanied 
by huge wains, lumbered with the luxuries of wines, cigars, 
tea, coffee and bread,—with the perils to be faced by the 
wild border hunter of America! 
Mounted on his mustang, with the occasional luxury of 
a pack mule and coffee and sugar for the first week out, 
the Borderer will traverse thousands of miles alone, armed 
with rifle and knife, through desert regions, scoure: by 
the fiercest, most cruel, the best mounted Nomads in the 
world, whom he must baffle wile with wile and force by 
force—will meet, single-handed, the terrible Grisly Bear 
that knows no panic, and cannot be turned aside when 
roused, even by fire—or cross, unscathed, the thundering 
track of myriad Bisons; and think himself very lucky, if, 
at the end of a year or two, after having eaten up his 
saddle skirts and made soup of his moccasins some half 
dozen times—he gets back to a trading post or settlement, 
