And still survives when all things else
To oblivion depart.
I. M.
Hunting Wild Animals in Africa.
It is remarkable that, while there is a general resemblance between the animals throughout the globe, each of its grand divisions has some species peculiar to itself. Thus, North America has the bison, the musk ox, and the grizzly bear, and these are found nowhere else. The lama, jaguar, tapir, and the anteater are peculiar to South America. Africa has its hippopotamus, giraffe, gnoo, and zebra. Asia has the chetah, royal tiger, nyl-ghau, yak, and dromedary. New Holland has its kangaroos, platypus, black swan, and cereopsis. Europe has a few peculiar species, but most of those which are found there, are also met with in the northern portions of Asia.
But while each division of the earth seems to afford something of the animal kind that is at once peculiar and remarkable, it must be admitted that Africa presents the most wonderful species. It furnishes us with the giraffe, which is by far the tallest of animals; it produces the larger species of elephant, which is the largest of animals; and the African lion, being superior in strength and fierceness to the Asiatic lion, is the most savage and formidable of wild beasts.
But it is not on account of their remarkable qualities only that the animals of Africa are a subject of interest. In that portion of the globe there are vast plains which are almost uninhabited by man. These afford abundant sustenance for numberless herds of antelopes, of which there are many kinds; for droves of quaggas, zebras, wild asses, ostriches, and other creatures; and here they are permitted to multiply with little interruption. The lion, panther, and leopard are almost their only enemies. These occasionally snatch a victim as he comes to the pool for water, or passes a bush or thicket where the enemy lies in ambush; but the number destroyed in this way is not sufficient greatly to check the increase of wild animals upon the plains of Africa. There are droves of antelopes stretching over the plains as far as the eye can reach, and amounting to fifteen or twenty thousand in number. It is not uncommon to see large numbers of zebras, quaggas, and even ostriches, mingling in the crowd as if they were of the same family.
A New England boy who takes his gun and goes into the woods or fields, fancies that he has pretty good luck if he can bring home half a dozen robins with two or three chip squirrels. If he kills a partridge or a brace of woodcock, he stands very high in his own estimation. I have myself roamed over the country for half a day, and felt myself compensated with no larger game than this. But sporting in Africa is quite a different matter.
Captain Harris, an Englishman, who travelled in the southern parts of Africa a few years since, has given an interesting account of his adventures there. The following extract presents one of the scenes which he describes upon the river Meritsane, at a distance of some five or six hundred miles north of the Cape of Good Hope.
“The reports of four savages of the Batlapi tribe, who joined us yesterday, determined us to halt a day for the purpose of hunting. Richardson and myself left the wagons at daybreak attended by these men, and crossing the river, took a northwesterly direction through a park of magnificent camelthorn trees, many of which were groaning under the huge nests of the social grosbeak; whilst others were decorated with green clusters of mistletoe, the bright scarlet berries of which were highly ornamental.