THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
of such marvellous power and precision that they are as superior to 
the old muzzle -loading guns used by big game hunters in South Africa 
less than forty years ago as were the latter to the bows and arrows of 
an earlier time. 
Nothing illustrates better the difficulties of getting about and finding 
big game in the interior of Africa before the country had been tamed 
than the fact that although Sir Samuel Baker, Speke and Grant, and 
many others of the early explorers, all of whom were enthusiastic big 
game hunters, travelled many times backwards and forwards up and down 
the Upper Nile between the Albert Nyanza and Gondokoro, the existence 
of the great white rhinoceros, as a common animal throughout that 
region, in the immediate vicinity of the western bank of the river, was 
never discovered until long after their time, when the country had been 
thoroughly pacified and reduced to order. 
I will now supplement these general remarks concerning African big 
game with some more particular information regarding all the more 
interesting species to be found in that vast continent, commencing with 
the elephant, the largest and in many respects the most interesting of all 
living mammals. 
4 
