the entrance to the kraal,
watching me and my companions as we advanced. When close to him he
looked at me for an instant, and then shouted, "Inkosi" (chief), and
seized my hand. His shout had brought out all the people who were in
the kraal, each of whom recognised me. Those whom I had left as boys,
and little girls, were now young men and women, and all were delighted
to see me. The Hottentot and Caffres, who had accompanied me from
Natal, looked on with astonishment, and when they heard me speaking
Caffre as well as they themselves spoke, they seemed to think it was
witchcraft.

I had a busy time of it answering all the questions that were put to me
by my old friends, who were anxious to know what I had been doing, where
I had been, and whether I intended to again live with them. When I told
them how I had passed day after day in a room, in the midst of a large
city (London), and had rarely seen the sun, and had shot no buck, had
not even seen a wild elephant, and had enjoyed no sport, they were
astonished how it was I had gone through all this, when I could have
come back at any time, and enjoyed the free, happy, exciting life of a
chief with them.

The arguments used by my old friends have often been considered since
that time by me, and the problem is a curious one, whether civilisation,
with all its advantages, has not so many drawbacks as to render the
wild, free, healthy life of so-called savages preferable.

At the date about which I write, there was no sport in the world finer
than could be obtained in that part of Africa. Such sport as
fox-hunting in England, deer-stalking in Scotland, pheasant, partridge,
or grouse shooting, was as inferior to the sport in Africa as catching
minnows is to salmon-fishing in a fine Canadian river. When a man has
once followed the track of the giant elephant, through the mazes of an
African bush, has come close to his formidable game, has fired at him,
and heard the terrific sound of his angry trumpet, as he charges through
the bush, he feels that he has enjoyed a class of sport superior to all
other. Even stealthily approaching and slaying the formidable buffalo,
in his forest stronghold, is a sport to be remembered all one's life.
To attempt to compare such sport as standing at the corner of a cover,
and knocking over pheasants as they fly over you, with the sport
formerly obtainable in the forests or on the plains of Africa is
ridiculous.

"Why do you not come