Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-06-16
South African Hunting.

We have had many a book of South
African adventure, but Cumming may
be said to have been among the last Of
the gentlemen pioneer-errants. The
English settled up the Transkei and
Natal; the discontinued Dutch trekked
out into the Transvaal. Livingstone
had made friends with the wild tribes
on the Zambesi, and had sent the trav-
cling gentlemen of the period on pill
grimages of admiration to the Victoria
Falls. These tourists into the interior,
on expeditions .'personaly conducted"
tried to pay their way, and not unfre-
quently nearly succeeded. A race of
heavily armed elephant-hunters arose,
who organized themselves in small par
ties, and were regularly equipped by
their sleeping partners, for slaughter or
barter. Beads of the fashionable colors
and breadths of scarlet cloth, with robes
of tawdry embroidery were exchanged
for tusks, skins and karosses. Though
most of these men had primarily an eye
to the main chance, many Of them were
as keen sportsmen as Cumming; and if
the life was rough there were the seduc-
lions of romance in it. There were
other dangers besides the risks of the
actual chase. Astute chiefs spounded''
the wagons for frontier duties, arbitra-
rily imposed; the poisonous tsetse fly
killed horses and draught oxen; foun-
tains gave out on the long desert stages,
or the rains descended and the floods
fell, changing meadows in the river
valleys into malarious swamps. The
strength of the traders was Slapped
o~N %hov xryoro oho1>an IN ~:ooaa
by fevers; venomous snakes, on the
lookout for snug quarters, coiled
themselves in their blankets and under
their pillows, and their cattle were
s.lifted'' by tiny barbarians, armed with
poisoned arrows, who could scarcely
be tracked overthe stones to their earths
and lairs in the kramzes. But the dam
ger and the profit continued to draw
these men like magnets, till the beats
they were won't to traverse have been
pretty nearly cleared of big game.
And where sporting adventure has ceased
to tempt the shooting trader the
savage has been left to pick up what is
left; so there is a rising market for the
dwindling supplies of ivory, etc., drawn
from the elephant districts that are
yearly more remote. A precisely SINH
lar process has been going forward from
each commercial centre on the coasts of
the continent. Arab traders, with their
headquarters at Zanzibar, meet the
merchants Of the Congo or Niger, who
do business on the western watersheds.
A Col. Grant might walk across Africa
now and never stumble by any accident
on the tracks of an elephant, and al
though the southern frontiers of Abys-
sinia have been comparatively undis-
turbed, we suspect that rifles consigned
to the merchants Of Khartoum have
been spreading desolation in Bakers
sporting paradise of the Abyssinian
tributaries of the Nile. Yet it is not SO
very many years ago since, while sitting
like the %patriarchs at the door of his
tent, he saw girafs and elephants pa
rading themselves in troops in the we'll
timbered savannahs in the valley be-
meath him. 1t is true that certain
animals are born with a luck of their
own, seeing that nothing but danger is
to be got by pursuing them; and the
danger is of a singularly disagreeable