The last of these despatches of the explorer was the longest, and, perhaps, the most worthy of his fame. Addressed to Earl Granville, it was a clear, full statement of the prevalence of the African slave trade and a terrible denunciation of it, together with a proposition “which,” he says, “I have very much at heart—the possibility of encouraging the native Christians of English settlements on the west coast of Africa, to remove, by voluntary emigration, to a healthy spot on this side the continent.” There are in Zanzibar a considerable number of British subjects from India, called Banians. They are, like all British subjects, prohibited from engaging in the slave trade, but shrewdly managing to throw the responsibility upon the Arabs, they are in fact responsible for the slave trade of Zanzibar and all the horrible “slaving” of East Africa. “The Manyema cannibals,” says Dr. Livingstone, in this dispatch to Earl Granville, “among whom I spent nearly two years, are innocents compared with our protected Banian fellow-subjects. By their Arab agents they compass the destruction of more human lives in one year than the Manyema do for their fleshpots in ten.” “Slaves are not bought,” he says in another place, “in the countries to which the Banian agents proceed. Indeed it is a mistake to call the system of Ujiji ‘slave trade’ at all; the captives are not traded for, but murdered for, and the gangs which are dragged coastwise are usually not slaves, but captive free people.” To eradicate this fearful wrong, the practical remedy proposed by the explorer in his letter to Earl Granville is encouragement by the British government to the voluntary emigration of native Christians from the English settlements of the West Coast to the East Coast. In reply to the argument of the unhealthfulness of this portion of Africa he says that the fevers are bad enough indeed, but that very much more of the disease prevailing is due to intemperance and gross licentiousness than fever. The whole dispatch is a demonstration of Dr. Livingstone’s earnest piety, humanity and practical sagacity. If there are some passages in it which show that his Highland blood is up, they may be attributed to a fiery hatred of injustice.

These quotations from Dr. Livingstone’s letters of this important period of his life will be appropriately concluded with his letter of thanks to the editor of the “Herald”:

“James Gordon Bennett, Esq., Jr.:—

“My Dear Sir—It is in general somewhat difficult to write to one we have never seen—it feels so much like addressing an abstract idea—but the presence of your representative, Mr. H. M. Stanley, in this distant region takes away the strangeness I should otherwise have felt, and in writing to thank you for the extreme kindness that prompted you to send him, I feel quite at home.

“If I explain the forlorn condition in which he found me you will easily perceive that I have good reason to use very strong expressions of gratitude. I came to Ujiji off a tramp of between four hundred and five hundred miles, beneath a blazing vertical sun, having been baffled, worried, defeated and forced to return, when almost in sight of the end of the geographical part of my mission, by a number of half-caste Moslem slaves sent to me from Zanzibar, instead of men. The sore heart made still sorer by the woful sights I had seen of man’s inhumanity to man reached and told on the bodily frame and depressed it beyond measure. I thought that I was dying on my feet. It is not too much to say that almost every step of the weary sultry way was in pain, and I reached Ujiji a mere ‘ruckle’ of bones.

“There I found that some five hundred pounds sterling worth of goods which I had ordered from Zanzibar had unaccountably been entrusted to a drunken half-caste Moslem tailor, who, after squandering them for sixteen months on the way to Ujiji, finished up by selling off all that remained for slaves and ivory for himself. He had “divined” on the Koran and found that I was dead. He had also written to the Governor of Unyanyembe that he had sent slaves after me to Manyema, who returned and reported my decease, and begged permission to sell off the few goods that his drunken appetite had spared. He, however, knew perfectly well, from men who had seen me, that I was alive, and waiting for the goods and men; but as for morality, he is evidently an idiot, and there being no law here except that of the dagger or musket, I had to sit down in great weakness, destitute of everything save a few barter cloths and beads, which I had taken the precaution to leave here in case of extreme need. The near prospect of beggary among Ujijians made me miserable. I could not despair, because I laughed so much at a friend who, on reaching the mouth of the Zambezi, said that he was tempted to despair on breaking the photograph of his wife. We could have no success after that. Afterward the idea of despair had to me such a strong smack of the ludicrous that it was out of the question.

“Well, when I had got to about the lowest verge, vague rumors of an English visitor reached me. I thought of myself as the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho; but neither priest, Levite, nor Samaritan could possibly pass my way. Yet the good Samaritan was close at hand, and one of my people rushed up at the top of his speed, and, in great excitement, gasped out, ‘An Englishman coming! I see him!’ and off he darted to meet him. An American flag, the first ever seen in these parts, at the head of a caravan, told me the nationality of the stranger. I am as cold and non-demonstrative as we islanders are usually reputed to be; but your kindness made my frame thrill. It was, indeed, overwhelming, and I said in my soul, ‘Let the richest blessings descend from the Highest on you and yours!’

“The news Mr. Stanley had to tell was thrilling. The mighty political changes on the Continent; the success of the Atlantic cables; the election of General Grant, and many other topics riveted my attention for days together, and had an immediate and beneficial effect on my health. I had been without news from home for years save what I could glean from a few Saturday Reviews and Punch of 1868. The appetite revived, and in a week I began to feel strong again.

“Mr. Stanley brought a most kind and encouraging despatch from Lord Clarendon, whose loss I sincerely deplore, the first I have received from the Foreign Office since 1866, and information that the British government had kindly sent a thousand pounds sterling to my aid. Up to his arrival I was not aware of any pecuniary aid. I came unsalaried, but this want is now happily repaired, and I am anxious that you and all my friends should know that, though uncheered by letter, I have stuck to the task which my friend Sir Roderick Murchison set me with ‘John Bullish’ tenacity, believing that all would come right at last.

“The watershed of South Central Africa is over seven hundred miles in length. The fountains thereon are almost innumerable—that is, it would take a man’s lifetime to count them. From the watershed they converge into four large rivers, and these again into two mighty streams in the great Nile valley, which begins in ten degrees to twelve degrees south latitude. It was long ere light dawned on the ancient problem and gave me a clear idea of the drainage. I had to feel my way, and every step of the way, and was, generally, groping in the dark, for who cared where the waters ran? We drank our fill and let the rest run by.

“The Portuguese who visited Cazemba asked for slaves and ivory, and heard of nothing else. I asked about the waters, questioned and cross-questioned, until I was almost afraid of being set down as afflicted with hydrocephalus.

“My last work, in which I have been greatly hindered from want of suitable attendants, was following the central line of drainage down through the country of the cannibals, called Manyuema, or, shortly, Manyema. This line of drainage has four large lakes in it. The fourth I was near when obliged to turn. It is from one to three miles broad, and never can be reached at any point or at any time of the year. Two western drains, the Lupira, or Bartle Frere’s River, flow into it at Lake Kamolondo. Then the great River Lomaine flows through Lake Lincoln into it, too, and seems to form the western arm of the Nile, on which Petherick traded.

“Now, I knew about six hundred miles of the watershed, and unfortunately the seventh hundred is the most interesting of the whole; for in it, if I am not mistaken, four fountains arise from an earthen mound, and the last of the four becomes, at no great distance off, a large river. Two of these run north to Egypt, Lupira and Louraine, and two run south into inner Ethiopia, as the Liambai, or upper Zambezi, and the Kafneare, but these are but the sources of the Nile mentioned by the Secretary of Minerva, in the city of Sais to Herodotus. I have heard of them so often, and at great distances off, that I cannot doubt their existence, and in spite of the sore longing for home that seizes me every time I think of my family I wish to finish up by their rediscovery.

“Five hundred pounds sterling worth of goods have again unaccountably been entrusted to slaves, and have been over a year on the way, instead of four months. I must go where they lie at your expense, ere I can put the natural completion to my work.

“And if my disclosures regarding the terrible Ujijian slavery should lead to the suppression of the east coast slave trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the discovery of all the Nile sources together. Now that you have done with domestic slavery forever, lend us your powerful aid toward this great object. This fine country is blighted, as with a curse from above, in order that the slavery privileges of the petty Sultan of Zanzibar may not be infringed, and the rights of the Crown of Portugal, which are mythical, should be kept in abeyance till some future time when Africa will become another India to Portuguese slave traders.

“I conclude by again thanking you most cordially for your great generosity, and am,

“Gratefully yours,
“David Livingstone.”

CHAPTER XIII.
THE SLAVE TRADE OF EAST AFRICA.

While waiting for supplies in Unyanyembe, Dr. Livingstone wrote a second letter to Mr. James Gordon Bennett, which was principally devoted to the slave trade of East Africa, to greatly aid in the abolition of which would be more gratifying to the explorer’s ambition than to discover all the sources of the Nile. This might well be supposed from what has already been quoted from Dr. Livingstone’s despatches to his government; but inasmuch as he here directly appeals to the American people, this volume would be incomplete without the remarkable and most thrillingly interesting statements of the letter in question. They were sent by cable telegram from London and appeared in the “Herald” newspaper of July 27, 1872:

“At present let me give a glimpse of the slave trade, to which the search and discovery of most of the Nile fountains have brought me face to face. The whole traffic, whether by land or ocean, is a gross outrage on the common law of mankind. It is carried on from age to age, and, in addition to the evils it inflicts, presents almost insurmountable obstacles to intercourse between different portions of the human family. This open sore in the world is partly owing to human cupidity, partly to the ignorance of the more civilized of mankind of the blight which lights chiefly on more degraded piracy on the high seas. (sic.) It was once as common as slave trading is now, but as it became thoroughly known the whole civilized world rose against it.

“In now trying to make Eastern African slave trade better known to Americans, I indulge the hope I am aiding on, though in a small degree, the good time coming yet when slavery as well as piracy will be chased from the world. Many have but a faint idea of the evils that trading in slaves inflicts on the victims and authors of its atrocities. Most people imagine that negroes, after being brutalized by a long course of servitude, with but few of the ameliorating influences that elevate the more favored races, are fair average specimens of the African man. Our ideas are derived from slaves of the west coast, who have for ages been subject to domestic bondage and all the depressing agencies of a most unhealthy climate. These have told most injuriously on their physical frames, while fraud and the rum trade have ruined their moral natures so as not to discriminate the difference of the monstrous injustice.

“The main body of the population is living free in the interior, under their own chiefs and laws, cultivating their own farms, catching fish in their own rivers, or fighting bravely with the grand old denizens of the forest, which, in more recent continents, can only be reached in rocky strata or under perennial ice. Winwood Reade hit the truth when he said the ancient Egyptian, with his large, round, black eyes, full, luscious lips, and somewhat depressed nose, is far nearer the typical negro than the west coast African, who has been debased by the unhealthy land he lives in. The slaves generally, and especially those on the west coast, at Zanzibar and elsewhere are extremely ugly. I have no prejudice against their color; indeed, any one who lives long among them forgets they are black and feels they are just fellow-men; but the low, retreating forehead, prognathous jaws, lark-heels and other physical peculiarities common among slaves and West African negroes, always awaken some feelings of aversion akin to those with which we view specimens of the Bill Sykes and ‘Bruiser’ class in England. I would not utter a syllable calculated to press down either class more deeply in the mire in which it is already sunk, but I wish to point out that these are not typical Africans any more than typical Englishmen, and that the natives on nearly all the high lands of the interior Continent are, as a rule, fair average specimens of humanity.

“I happened to be present when all the head men of the great Chief Msama—who lives west of the south end of Tanganyika—had come together to make peace with certain Arabs who had burned their chief town, and I am certain one could not see more finely formed, intellectual heads in any assembly in London or Paris, and the faces and forms corresponded finely with the well-shaped heads. Msama himself had been a sort of Napoleon for fighting and conquering in his younger days. He was exactly like the Ancient Assyrians sculptured on the Nineveh marbles, as Nimrod and others, and he showed himself to be one of ourselves by habitually indulging in copious potations of beer, called pombe, and had become what Nathaniel Hawthorne called ‘bulbous below the ribs.’ I do not know where the phrase ‘bloated aristocracy’ arose. It must be American, for I have had glimpses of a good many English noblemen, and Msama was the only specimen of a ‘bloated aristocrat’ on whom I ever set eyes.

“Many of the women are very pretty, and, like all ladies, would have been much prettier if they had only let themselves alone. Fortunately the dears could not change charming black eyes, beautiful foreheads, nicely rounded limbs, well shaped forms and small hands and feet, but must adorn themselves, and this they do by filing splendid teeth to points like cats’ teeth. It was distressing, for it made their smile like that of crocodile ornaments, scarce. They are not black, but of light, warm brown color, and so very sisterish, if I may use the word, it feels an injury done one’s self to see a bit of grass stuck through the cartilage of the nose so as to bulge out the alæ nasi, or wing of the nose of the anatomists.

“Cazembe’s Queen, Moaria Nyombe by name, would be esteemed a real beauty either in London Paris, or New York, and yet she had a small hole through the cartilage, near the tip of her fine, slightly aquiline nose. But she had only filed one side of two of the front of her superb snow-white teeth, and then, what a laugh she had! Let those who wish to know go see her. She was carried to her farm in a pony phæton, which is a sort of throne, fastened on two very long poles and carried by twelve stalwart citizens. If they take the Punch motto of Cazembe—‘Niggers don’t require to be shot here’—as their own, they may show themselves to be men; but whether they do or not Cazembe will show himself a man of sterling good sense.

“Now, these people, so like ourselves externally, have brave, genuine human souls. Rua, large sections of country northwest of Cazembe, but still in same inland region, is peopled with men very like those of Wsama and Cazembe. An Arab, Syed Ben Habib, was sent to trade in Rua two years ago, and, as Arabs usually do where natives have no guns, Syed Ben Habib’s elder brother carried matters with a high hand. The Rua men observed the elder brother slept in a white tent, and, pitching spears into it by night, killed him. As Moslems never forgive blood, the younger brother forthwith ‘ran a muck’ on all indiscriminately in a large district.

“Let it not be supposed any of these people are, like American Indians, insatiable, blood-thirsty savages, who will not be reclaimed or entertain terms of lasting friendship with fair-dealing strangers. Had the actual murderers been demanded, and a little time granted, I feel morally certain, from many other instances among tribes who, like the Ba Rua, have not been spoiled by Arab traders, they would all have been given up.

“The chiefs of the country would, first of all, have specified the crime of which the elder brother was guilty, and who had been led to avenge it. It is very likely they would have stipulated no other should be punished but the actual perpetrator, the domestic slave acting under his orders being considered free of blame.

“I know nothing that distinguishes the uncontaminated African from other degraded peoples more than their entire reasonableness and good sense. It is different after they have had wives, children, and relatives kidnapped, but that is more than human nature, civilized or savage, can bear. In the chase in question indiscriminate slaughter, capture, and plunder took place. A very large number of very fine young men were captured and secured in chains and wooden yokes.

“I came near the party of Syed Ben Habib, close to a point where a huge rent in the Mountain of Rua allows the escape of the great river Lualaba out of Lake Moora, and here I had for the first time an opportunity of observing the difference between slaves and freemen made captive. When fairly across the Lualaba, Syed Ben Habib thought his captives safe, and got rid of the trouble of attending to and watching the chained gangs by taking off both chains and yokes. All declared joy and a perfect willingness to follow Syed to the end of the world or elsewhere, but next morning twenty-two made clear of two mountains.

“Many more, seeing the broad Lualaba roll between them and the homes of their infancy, lost all heart, and in three days eight of them died. They had no complaint but pain in the heart, and they pointed out its seat correctly, though many believe the heart situated underneath the top of the sternum, or breast bone. This to me was the most startling death I ever saw. They evidently die of broken-heartedness, and the Arabs wondered, seeing they had plenty to eat.

“I saw others perish, particularly a very fine boy ten or twelve years of age. When asked where he felt ill, he put his hand correctly and exactly over the heart. He was kindly carried, and, as he breathed out his soul, was laid gently on the side of the path. The captors are not unusually cruel. They were callous. Slaving hardened their hearts.

“When Syed, an old friend of mine, crossed Lualaba, he heard I was in the village, where a company of slave traders were furiously assaulted for three days by justly incensed Bobemba. I would not fight nor allow my people to fire if I saw them, because Bobemba had been especially kind to me. Syed sent a party of his own people to invite me to leave the village and come to him. He showed himself the opposite of hard-hearted; but slavery hardens within, petrifies the feelings, is bad for the victims and ill for the victimizers. Once, it is said, a party of twelve, who had been slaves in their own country—Cunda or Conda, of which Cazemba is chief or general—were loaded with large, heavy yokes, which were forked trees, about three inches in diameter and seven or eight feet long, the neck inserted in the fork and an iron bar driven across one end of the fork to the other and riveted to the other end, tied at night to the tree or ceiling of the hut, and the neck being firm in the fork and the slave held off from unloosing it, was excessively troublesome to the wearer, and, when marching, two yokes were tied together by tree ends and loads put on the slaves’ heads beside.

“A woman, having an additional yoke and load, and a child on her back, said to me on passing, ‘They are killing me. If they would take off the yoke I could manage the load and child; but I shall die with three loads.’ The one who spoke this did die; poor little girl! Her child perished of starvation.

“I interceded some, but when unyoked off they bounded into the long grass, and I was greatly blamed for not caring in presence of the owners of the property.

“After the day’s march under a broiling, vertical sun, with yokes and heavy loads, the strongest were exhausted. The party of twelve, above mentioned, were sitting down singing and laughing. ‘Hallo, said I, ‘these fellows take to it kindly. This must be the class for whom philosophers say slavery is the natural state;’ and I went and asked the cause of their mirth.

“I had asked aid of their owner as to the meaning of the word ‘Rukha,’ which usually means fly or leap. They were using it to express the idea of haunting, as a ghost, inflicting disease or death, and the song was: ‘Yes, we going away to Manga, abroad, or white man’s land, with yoke on our necks; but we shall have no yokes in death, and shall return and haunt and kill you.’ Chorus then struck in, which was the name of the man who had sold each of them, and then followed the general laugh, in which at first I saw no bitterness. Tarembee, an old man, at least one hundred and four years, being one of the sellers, in accordance with African belief, they had no doubt of being soon able, by ghost power, to kill even him.

“The refrain was as if:—‘Oh! oh! oh! bird of freedom, you sold me.’ ‘Oh! oh! oh! I shall haunt you! Oh! oh! oh!’ Laughter told not of mirth, but of tears, such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter. He that is higher than the highest regardeth.

“If I am permitted,” says Dr. Livingstone in concluding the subject of the slave trade, “in any way to promote its suppression, I shall not grudge the toil and time I have spent. It would be better to lessen this great human woe than to discover the sources of the Nile.”

The moral degradation of these people is only to be reached and cured, in the deliberate judgment of the explorer-missionary, through the means of Christian civilization. “The religion of Christ,” he says with emphasis, “is unquestionably the best for man. I refer to it not as the Protestant, the Catholic, the Greek, or any other, but to the comprehensive faith which has spread more widely over the world than most people imagine, and whose votaries, of whatever name, are better than any outside the pale.” The great end of placing the numerous tribes of East and Central Africa under the pure and elevating morality of the Christian religion cannot be successful until the suppression of the inhuman slave trade, which has its headquarters at Zanzibar, shall have been accomplished. It would be unjust to forget that Great Britain has done much, very much, for the suppression of this terrible traffic in other portions of the globe. It would be unjust to charge the government of Great Britain with intentional criminality in this case. But it stands proved, by the failure of English expeditions to find Dr. Livingstone, and by his own positive, earnest testimony, that it is the subjects of the British monarchy who are responsible for the existence of the slave trade of Zanzibar and all the nameless horrors of the interior resulting therefrom. The moral culpability, by reason of neglect—not to put the case too strongly—of the British government is therefore made manifest; and of this great national turpitude that government must stand convicted before the bar of Christendom.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE ANIMAL KINGDOM OF AFRICA,

No portion of the globe is so productive of wild animals as Africa. There animal life is more extensive, if we may so say, and more varied than anywhere else. The domestic animals of that continent are not to such extent different from those of other parts of the world as to merit special mention, with the exception of the camel, without whose aid a large portion of the country would be not only uninhabitable but untraversable. The invaluable services which this patient but obstinate beast of burden renders to the inhabitants of Northern Africa are known to all men. In northern Africa and in the central portions, horses are numerous and many of them of excellent breeds. Here and in many parts of South Africa, there are many cattle, used as beasts of burden and for beef. Some of them are noted for the prodigious size of their horns. Sheep abound in some portions of the continent, but in South Africa the flocks are composed almost entirely of goats which subsist better on the dry herbs of the dessert, yield more milk, and are considered more palatable food.

But in respect to wild beasts—all kinds of “game” as the sportsman would say—Africa, as has been said by Mr. John Bonner, “may be called the region of animal life, since there are more than twice the number of species in it than in the other quarters of the globe.” Here are found, in immense numbers, all those kinds of animals which fill the strong cages of the menageries of Europe and America, of parks, and zoological gardens, and many more besides. Here are the most abject and degraded specimens of mankind and the most sagacious and lordly wild animals. Here are the most beautiful and gentle of birds and the most venomous and terrible serpents and reptiles. Here are small insects whose attacks are fatal to many useful animals, and others—the devouring locusts—which in a single day devastate vast sections of country.

The lion, so long regarded as the king of beasts, is found in most parts of interior Africa. We have already seen that Dr. Livingstone’s opinion of this beast is not very exalted. It is certainly inferior to the African leopard both in beauty and courage. In strength and prowess this latter animal is not inferior to the Asiatic tiger. The hippopotamus, supposed to be the Behemoth of Job, is found in nearly all the rivers of Central and South Africa and the Nile. His body is often as large as that of a full-grown elephant. A noted African hunter killed one with a single ball, which was six feet broad across the belly. The skin of an adult hippopotamus, according to Du Chaillu, who shot several and stuffed one, is from one and a-half to two inches thick, and extremely solid and tough—quite bullet-proof, in fact, except in a few thinner spots, as behind the ear and near the eyes. It is devoid of hair with the exception of a few short bristly hairs in the tail, and a few scattered tufts near the muzzle. The color of the skin is a clayey yellow, assuming a roseate hue under the belly. After death, the animal becomes a dull brownish color. It is successfully hunted by the natives of east equatorial Africa, who approach within a few feet of it, fire their “slugs” at his eye and then run for dear life; for if the animal be not killed the hunter surely will be. Cumming, the most successful of African Nimrods, once slew some ten hippopotami in the course of a couple of days, and secured the carcasses of most of them, dragging them with oxen to which were attached strong cables fastened to the beasts. The bagging of several tons of edible game—the meat of the beast is described by some as like beef, by others as like pork—in a day or two could not be accomplished elsewhere than in Africa.

Most of the perennial rivers and even small streams of a few feet depth abound in crocodiles. Those of South Africa, whose nature and habits are described by Dr. Livingstone and Cumming, are a different species from the crocodile of the Nile, one of the sacred animals of the Egyptians. They are as great in size, however, and, perhaps, greater in voracity. Their great numbers, particularly in the waters of equatorial Africa, are astonishing. The natives hunt them, going in canoes, and using a sort of harpoon with which the stout armor, elsewhere impenetrable, of the animal is pierced behind the legs. The natives are fond of the flesh. Though a full-grown crocodile will weigh as much as an ox, there is not much flesh that is edible. Cumming shot one more than twenty feet in length in a stream not more than twelve feet wide. “On our return to Damagondai’s town,” says Du Chaillu, “as we were paddling along, I perceived in the distance ahead a beautiful deer, looking meditatively into the waters of the lagoon, of which from time to time it took a drink. I stood up to get a shot, and we approached with the utmost silence. But just as I raised my gun to fire, a crocodile leaped out of the water, and, like a flash, dove back again with the struggling animal in his powerful jaws. So quickly did the beast take his prey that though I fired at him I was too late. I would not have believed that this huge and unwieldy animal could move with such velocity; but the natives told me that the deer often falls prey to the crocodile. Sometimes he even catches the leopard, but then there is a harder battle than the poor little deer could make.”

The rhinoceros, formerly found on the slopes of Table Mountain, has now been driven far into the interior of South Africa, but here these huge animals, second only to the elephant and hippopotamus in bulk, are found along all the streams and in the neighborhood of fountains and pools of water. Dr. A. Smith in his “Zoology of South Africa” makes three species of rhinoceros. The great hunter, Cumming, describes what he considers as four different kinds.[4] Dr. Livingstone, however, asserts that there are but two species—the white and the black—insisting that all the species made by naturalists beyond these two are based on mere differences in size, age, and direction of horns, all which vary much in each variety. The rhinoceros has a “guardian spirit” in the rhinoceros-bird, his constant companion and devoted friend.[5] Those of the black species are very wary, fierce, and difficult to take. Their flesh is tough also, whilst that of the white rhinoceros is fat, tender, and, to the South African tribes, delicious. He is of a comparatively gentle spirit also, and more easily found and dispatched.

But the most interesting of the wild animals of Africa is the elephant, which, as is well known, is in several respects different from the elephant of Asia. His ears are larger, and the formation of his tough, elastic feet is very different. His tusks also are larger and he reaches a greater size than the Asiatic elephant. He has been found in nearly all parts of interior Africa which have been explored, and to this day may be seen from vessels sailing along the West Coast near the equator, as he comes down to the sea to bathe his ponderous body. These animals are found in troops, varying in number from a few to several hundred. At times different troops have been seen together, whose heavy tread, in escaping, would make the earth tremble. They are exceedingly delicate as to their food, of which, however, they require immense quantities. Docile by nature, they are wonderfully fearful of man, whom, with a favorable wind, they can scent at a great distance; but in defence of their young or when attacked they fight with the greatest courage and effect. The elephant is unquestionably recognized by all animals of the forest as their undoubted master. They often retain life long after being mortally wounded, and when about to die, the agony of the dissolution of such an immense physical system forces tears from their eyes, but they expire without convulsions and in heroic silence. It might almost appear that their predominating feeling is that of sorrow that the vast forests through which they have roamed for years—perhaps a century—shall know them no more. It is difficult to believe one can kill these sublime animals, for gain alone, unless he be, at bottom, a genuine scoundrel.

It is doubtless different, however, when the gratification of the sporting propensity is the impelling motive. It was this which carried the Scottish hunter, Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, into the interior of South Africa, only about two years after the arrival there of Dr. Livingstone, and where he remained, hunting elephants, lions, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, camelopards, and other great game, for the period of nearly five years. Mr. Cumming’s “Adventures in South Africa” were published, if our memory does not err, in the year 1850. They were speedily republished in America, and were at first received with no little incredulity, as, by the way, most accounts of adventures in Africa, from Mungo Park to Stanley, have been. Adventures there appear to be naturally incredible to the rest of the world. It is as it was with respect to the rebuilding of Chicago; no one believed it until he saw it all, and after that he could believe that almost anything is within the power of man’s spirit of enterprise once fully aroused.[6] The incredulity in regard to Mr. Cumming’s wonderful success in securing great game in Africa has long since passed away, and his narrative is now regarded as altogether trustworthy. He remained in Africa, hunting, the greater part of five years. During this time he slew more than one hundred elephants, besides those, mortally wounded, which escaped. He was equally successful with the camelopard, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lion, buffalo, eland, and the great variety of antelope which live in South Africa in countless numbers. One of his first adventures with large animals was with a troop of camelopards. It is thus graphically described:

“We halted beside a glorious fountain, the name of which was Massouey, but I at once christened it ‘the Elephant’s own Fountain.’ This was a very remarkable spot on the southern border of endless elephant forests, at which I had at length arrived. The fountain was deep and strong, situated in a hollow at the eastern extremity of an extensive vley, and its margin was surrounded by a level stratum of solid old red sandstone. Here and there lay a thick layer of soil upon the rock, and this was packed flat with the fresh spoor of elephants. Around the water’s edge the very rock was worn down by the gigantic feet which for ages had trodden there. We drew up the wagons on a hillock on the eastern side of the water. I had just cooked my breakfast, and commenced to feed, when I heard my men exclaim, ‘Almagtig keek de ghroote clomp cameel;’ and raising my eyes from my sassayby stew, I beheld a truly beautiful and very unusual scene. From the margin of the fountain there extended an open level vley, without a tree or bush, that stretched away about a mile to the northward, where it was bounded by extensive groves of wide-spreading mimosas. Up the middle of this vley stalked a troop of ten colossal giraffes, flanked by two large herds of blue wildebeests and zebras, with an advanced guard of pallahs. They were all coming to the fountain to drink, and would be within rifle-shot of the wagons before I could finish my breakfast. I however, continued to swallow my food with the utmost expedition, having directed my men to catch and saddle ‘Colesberg.’ In a few minutes the giraffes were slowly advancing within two hundred yards, stretching their graceful necks, and gazing in wonder at the unwonted wagons. Grasping my rifle, I now mounted ‘Colesberg,’ and rode slowly toward them. They continued gazing at the wagons until I was within one hundred yards of them, when, whisking their long tails over their rumps, they made off at an easy canter. As I pressed upon them they increased their pace; but ‘Colesberg’ had much the speed of them, and before we had proceeded half a mile I was riding by the shoulder of a dark-chestnut old bull, whose head towered high above the rest. Letting fly at the gallop, I wounded him behind the shoulder; soon after which I broke him from the herd, and presently going ahead of him, he came to a stand. I then gave him a second bullet, somewhere near the first. These two shots had taken effect and he was now in my power, but I would not lay him low so far from camp; so, having waited until he had regained his breath, I drove him half way back toward the wagons. Here he became obstreperous; so loading one barrel, and pointing my rifle toward the clouds, I shot him in the throat, when, rearing high, he fell backward and expired. This was a magnificent specimen of the giraffe, measuring upward of eighteen feet in height. I stood for nearly half an hour engrossed in the contemplation of his extreme beauty and gigantic proportions; and, if there had been no elephants, I could have exclaimed, like Duke Alexander of Gordon when he killed the famous old stag with seventeen tine, ‘Now I can die happy.’ But I longed for an encounter with the noble elephants, and I thought little more of the giraffe than if I had killed a gemsbok or an eland.”

And in another place he describes his second success with the camelopard:

“We now bent our steps homeward. We had not ridden many miles when we observed a herd of fifteen camelopards browsing quietly in an open glade of the forest. After a very severe chase, in the course of which they stretched out into a magnificent widely extended front, keeping their line with a regularity worthy of a troop of dragoons, I succeeded in separating a fine bull, upward of eighteen feet in height, from the rest of the herd, and brought him to the ground within a short distance of the camp. The Bechuanas expressed themselves delighted at my success. They kindled a fire and slept beside the carcass, which they very soon reduced to bil-tongue and marrow-bones.”