FOREWORD 
‘'I SPEAK of Africa and golden joys’"; the joy of wan¬ 
dering through lonely lands; the joy of hunting the mighty 
and terrible lords of the wilderness, the cunning, the wary, 
and the grim. 
In these greatest of the world’s great hunting-grounds 
there are mountain peaks whose snows are dazzling under 
the equatorial sun; swamps where the slime oozes and 
bubbles and festers in the steaming heat; lakes like seas; 
skies that burn above deserts where the iron desolation is 
shrouded from view by the wavering mockery of the mirage; 
vast grassy plains where palms and thorn-trees fringe the 
dwindling streams; mighty rivers rushing out of the heart 
of the continent through the sadness of endless marshes; 
forests of gorgeous beauty, where death broods in the dark 
and silent depths. 
There are regions as healthy as the northland; and other 
regions, radiant with bright-hued flowers, birds and butter¬ 
flies, odorous with sweet and heavy scents, but, treacherous 
in their beauty, and sinister to human life. On the land 
and in the water there are dread brutes that feed on the 
flesh of man; and among the lower things, that crawl, and 
fly, and sting, and bite, he finds swarming foes far more 
evil and deadly than any beast or reptile; foes that kill 
his crops and his cattle, foes before which he himself per¬ 
ishes in his hundreds of thousands. 
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