ON SAFARI 
CHAPTER I 
AFRICA—SOUTH AND EAST 
INTRODUCTORY 
South Africa when the world was young—that is, 
when we were young—represented to those who had 
inherited an adventurous spirit, and in whose breast a 
love of the wild was innate, something that approached 
the acme of terrestrial joys. Thereaway, our earlier 
lessons had taught that, co-existent with the humdrum 
monotony of a work-a-day world, there yet survived 
a vast continent still absolutely unknown and unsub¬ 
dued by man, and across whose vacant space there 
sprawled, inscribed in burning letters on the map, 
that vocal word, “ Unexplored.” 
To no subsequent generation, as this world is 
geologically constituted, can a similar condition ever 
recur. 
To such temperaments as indicated the rough, free 
intangible life on an unknown veld, surrounded by 
savage Nature, and with its concomitants of self-reliance 
and self-resource, of difficulty, and sometimes of danger, 
appealed to the verge of—and, in some cases, beyond— 
the limits of self-restraint. The contemporary writings 
of Cornwallis Harris, of Baldwin and of Gordon Gum¬ 
ming were read and re-read till almost known by heart. 
They fired boyish imagination ; but in my case circum¬ 
stances forbade such realisation, since success comes 
more surely to the plodder than to the adventurer. 
B 
