ii6 
WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WA YS 
CHAP. 
The grandest of all hunters are the Hamran 
Arabs, upon the Settite river, on the borders of 
Abyssinia, who have no other weapon but the heavy 
two-edged sword. I gave an intimate account of 
these wonderful Nimrods many years ago in the 
Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, but it is impossible to 
treat upon the elephant without some reference to 
these extraordinary people. 
Since I visited that country in i86i, the published 
account of those travels attracted several parties of 
the best class of ubiquitous Englishmen, and I regret 
to hear that all those mighty hunters who accom¬ 
panied me ,have since been killed in the desperate 
hand-to-hand encounters with wild elephants. Their 
life is a constant warfare with savage beasts, there¬ 
fore it may be expected that the termination is a 
death upon their held of battle, invariably sword in 
hand. 
James Bruce, the renowned African traveller of 
the last century, was the hrst to describe the Agag- 
heers of Abyssinia, and nothing could be more 
graphic than his description both of the people and 
the countries they inhabit, through which I have 
followed in Bruce’s almost forgotten footsteps, 
with the advantage of possessing his interesting 
book as my guide wheresoever I went in i86i. 
Since that journey, the deplorable interference of 
England in Egypt which resulted in the abandon¬ 
ment of the Soudan and the sacrifice of General 
Gordon at Khartoum has completely severed the 
link of communication that we had happily estab- 
