IN AFRICA 
CHAPTER I 
THE PREPARATION FOR DEPARTURE. EXPERIENCES 
WITH WILLING FRIENDS AND ADVISERS 
Ever since I can remember, almost, I have cher¬ 
ished a modest ambition to hunt lions and elephants. 
At an early age, or, to be more exact, at about that 
age which finds most boys wondering whether they 
would rather be Indian fighters or sailors, I ran 
across a copy of Stanley’s Through the Dark Con¬ 
tinent. It was full of fascinating adventures. I 
thrilled at the accounts which spoke in terms of easy 
familiarity of “express” rifles and “elephant” guns, 
and in my vivid but misguided imagination, I pic¬ 
tured an elephant gun as a sort of cannon—a huge, 
unwieldy arquebus—that fired a ponderous shell. 
The old woodcuts of daring hunters and charging 
lions inspired me with unrest and longing—the 
longing to bid the farm farewell and start down the 
road for Africa. Africa! What a picture it con¬ 
jured up in my fancy! Then, as even now, it sym¬ 
bolized a world of adventurous possibilities; and in 
my boyhood fancy, it lay away off there—some¬ 
where—vaguely—beyond mountains and deserts 
and oceans, a vast, mysterious, unknown land, that 
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