THROUGH THE PLEISTOCENE 
3 
of life in Europe as it was led by our ancestors ages before 
the dawn of anything that could be called civilization. The 
great beasts that now live in East Africa were in that by-gone 
age represented by close kinsfolk in Europe; and in many 
places, up to the present moment, African man, absolutely 
naked, and armed as our early paleolithic ancestors were 
armed, lives among, and on, and in constant dread of, these 
beasts, just as was true of the men to whom the cave lion 
was a nightmare of terror, and the mammoth and the 
woolly rhinoceros possible but most formidable prey. 
This region, this great fragment out of the long-buried 
past of our race, is now accessible by railroad to all who 
care to go thither; and no field more inviting offers itself 
to hunter or naturalist, while even to the ordinary traveller 
it teems with interest. On March 23, 1909, I sailed thither 
from New York, in charge of a scientific expedition sent 
out by the Smithsonian, to collect birds, mammals, reptiles, 
and plants, but especially specimens of big game, for the 
National Museum at Washington. In addition to myself 
and my son Kermit (who had entered Harvard a few 
months previously), the party consisted of three naturalists: 
Surgeon-Lieut. Col. Edgar A. Mearns, U.S.A., retired; Mr. 
Edmund Heller, of California, and Mr. J. Alden Loring, 
of Owego, N. Y. My arrangements for the trip had been 
chiefly made through two valued English friends, Mr. 
Frederick Courteney Selous, the greatest of the world’s 
big-game hunters, and Mr. Edward North Buxton, also a 
mighty hunter. On landing we were to be met by Messrs. 
R. J. Cuninghame and Leslie Tarlton, both famous hunt¬ 
ers; the latter an Australian, who served through the South 
African war; the former by birth a Scotchman, and a Cam- 
