From a Photograph by Nicola Perscheid, Berlin....

I never dreamed that my book With Flashlight and Rifle —alike in its German and its English and American editions—would receive everywhere so kind a welcome, or that it would make for me so many new friends, both at home and abroad. I have been encouraged by this success to give a fresh series of my studies of African wild life and of my “Nature Documents,” as Dr. Ludwig Heck has designated my photographs, in the present work. I should like to express my gratitude once again to all those who, in

On the afternoon of January 14, 1897, a small caravan of native bearers, some fifty strong, was wearily making its way across the wide plain towards its long-wished-for goal, Lake Nakuro, which was at last coming, into sight in the far distance. The appearance of the bearers and their worn-out clothing showed plainly that the caravan had made a long journey. And so it was. Weakened by fever, I was coming from the Victoria Nyanza in the hope of making a quicker recovery in this more elevated dist

The mysterious charm of wild nature, undisturbed, almost untouched, by the hand of man,—the charm inherent in all that I have in mind when I talk of “the spell of the Elelescho”—explains the keen and profound interest with which my pictures of animal life were received at home. In these days, when even electricity has been harnessed by men, there is a feeling that the knell has been sounded of all that is wild, be it man or beast. And however unpretending and inadequate the little pictures might

Theodore Roosevelt , President of the United States of America, says in his lately published work, Out-door Pastimes of an American Hunter : “The most striking and melancholy feature in connection with American big game is the rapidity with which it has vanished.” He makes a critical investigation of this disturbing fact, and he most strongly advocates restrictive laws and the establishment of reservations for wild animals. He puts himself at the head of every effort directed towards the protect

To learn to know anything with precision, to devote oneself to it and master it in its smallest details, one must generally make its study a labour of love. So the spread of more exact knowledge of the manifestations of nature around us must go hand in hand with the awakening of love for them and for the splendours they present to our view. And with this increasing impulse towards research and knowledge must come the desire to prevent as far as possible the rapid destruction of fauna and flora.

Not by far-away Lake Nakuro alone has “the Spell of the Elelescho” lived. It has lived, and still lives, all over the world; only that it goes by other names, and is linked with other symbols. In the brief summer of the Polar regions, battling with the snow and ice and the long night, it lives in the few stunted willows and the scanty reindeer-moss. It can only be fully understood where the ungainly walrus, the mighty Polar bear, coloured like his own snowfields, and the herds of fur-adorned mus

The endless wilderness of the Nyíka presents to the traveller so much that is strange, beautiful, and wonderful that at times his senses become wearied of these changing impressions of travel, and a longing comes over him for the familiar scenes he has learned to love at home. As though in giant characters written on its rocks, the Nyíka tells us of the conditions and the life of the past and at the same time of everyday actualities, giving us its message as well by its snow-covered volcanic pea

The German sportsman knows well the mysterious charm that speaks to the listener, when in the woods in spring he hears the note of the woodcock and the cry of the ptarmigan, and when in autumn he hears the call of the stag to its mate. It must be that the listener is subject to some atavistic influence, some impulse rooted in the dim past now quickening into life. Let him who understands this charm follow me through the equatorial wilderness, and listen with me to the music of songs and notes th

Scenes of marvellous beauty open out before the wanderer who follows the windings of some great river through the unknown regions of Equatorial East Africa. The dark, turbid stream is to find its way, after a thousand twists and turns, into the Indian Ocean. Filterings from the distant glaciers of Kilimanjaro come down into the arid velt, there to form pools and rivulets that traverse in part the basin of the Djipe Lake and at last are merged in the Rufu River. As is so often the case with Afric

“Big game hunting is a fine education!” With this opinion of Mr. H. A. Bryden I am in entire agreement, but I cannot assent to the dictum so often cited of some of the most experienced African hunters, to the effect that Equatorial East Africa offers the sportsman no adequate compensation for all the difficulties and dangers there to be faced. I cannot subscribe to this view, because to my mind these very difficulties and dangers impart to the sport of this region a fascination scarcely to be eq

Many sportsmen of to-day have no idea what numbers of rhinoceroses there used to be in Germany in those distant epochs when the cave-dweller waged war with his primitive weapons against all the mighty animals of old—a war that came in the course of the centuries to take the shape of our modern sport. The visitor to the zoological gardens, who knows nothing of “big game,” finds it hard perhaps to think of the great unwieldy “rhino” in this capacity. Yet I am continually being asked to tell about

Simba Station—Lion Station—is the name of a place on the Uganda Railway, which connects the Indian Ocean with the Victoria-Nyanza. It is situated near Nairobi, and the sound of its name recalls vividly to my memory January 25, 1897, the great day when I came face to face with three lions. At that time no iron road led to the interior of the country; there were neither railway lines nor telegraph wires to vibrate to the sound of the voice of the monarch of the wilderness. But the white man was so

Every one who knows Equatorial East Africa will bear me out in saying that it is easier nowadays to kill fifty rhinoceroses than a single bull-elephant carrying tusks weighing upwards of a couple of hundred pounds. There are only a few survivors left of this world-old race of giants. Many species, probably, have disappeared without leaving a single trace behind. The block granite sarcophagi on the Field of the Dead in Sakkarah in Egypt, dating from 3,500 years ago, are memorials (each weighing s

“When men and beasts first emerged from the tree called ‘Omumborombongo,’ all was dark. Then a Damara lit a fire, and zebras, gnus, and giraffes sprang frightened away, whilst oxen, sheep, and dogs clustered fearlessly together.” So Fritsch told us forty years ago, from the ancient folk-lore of the Ova-Herero, one of the most interesting tribes of South-West Africa. If the photographing of wild life is only to be achieved when conditions are favourable, and is beset with peculiar difficulties in

Among the happiest days of my life I reckon those which I spent camping out in the heart of the Nyíka. Nearly every hour there had something fresh to arouse my interest, not only in the life of the wild animals that roamed at large all about, but also in that of the specimens which I had caught or my men had brought to me, and whose habits and ways I could observe within the enclosure of the camp. Of course our unique menagerie could not boast members of all the most attractive species of the Af

There is a notion prevalent, due to superficial observers, that there are certain drinking-places to which the wild animals are bound to come to quench their thirst, in all circumstances, during the hot season. Were this so the animals would have ceased ere now to exist. The poisoned arrow of the native, or the rifle of the white man, would long since have exterminated them. It is the case, however, that you can count upon finding game at specific drinking-places in the hot weather under certain

There is an old German recipe for the catching of a lion: you put the Sahara through a sieve—and behold the King of Beasts! The photographing of lions is not to be managed so easily. I am always being asked how I took my photographs. I shall try to give an answer in the following pages. Before With Flashlight and Rifle was published, the only successful photographs taken by night that were known to me were some few excellent pictures of certain species of American deer, secured by an enthusiasti

I may be permitted a few words in conclusion to reaffirm certain views to which I cling. I would not have my readers attach any special importance to what I myself have achieved, but I would like them to take to heart the moral of my book. It may be summed up in a very few words. I maintain that wild life everywhere, and in all its forms, should be religiously protected—that the forces of nature should not be warred against more than our struggle for existence renders absolutely inevitable; and

“His extraordinary photographic work among the teeming wild creatures of East Africa.... He is a great field naturalist, a trained scientific observer, as well as a mighty hunter; and no mere hunter can ever do work even remotely approaching in value that which he has done. His book should be translated into English at once.”...

“An entrancing work. His photographs are positively wonderful; his letterpress is vivid.”— Standard. “A book of singular value.”— Yorkshire Post. “This remarkable book.”— Sporting and Dramatic News. “A unique and most remarkable book.”— Scotsman. “Space forbids any mention of the author’s hunting adventures or of his many thrilling escapes from death, but all through the two volumes the human interest is as strong as the scientific.”— Graphic. “A remarkable book. Nobody else has ever obtained so