IN CENTRAL AFRICA

Hokitika Guardian, 14 March 1925, Page 4

IN CENTRAL AFRICA

Many accounts of big-game limiting in Africa have been written, but that given by -Mr Frank Savile in “The High Grass Trail ” differs from them in one material particular. The expedition ho describes was undertaken at a season which is supposed to be so uiipropitioiis that “the intelligentsia of Shikar do not' usually attempt to shoot.” At that period of the year the open country is covered with a denso growth which makes the quarry exceedingly hard to locate. .Mr Savile tells us that lie had frequently to feel for the game, so to speak, instead of stalking it. However, despite these difficulties, he had no reason to be dissatisfied with his bag. He, .Mrs Savile who accompanied him, and their native carriers were able to live, in the main, upon the produce of rifle and gun.

lieira was their starting point, and the author was by no means impressed bv the Portuguese notions of punctuality. Thence they went up the Zambesi to the Shire River, rounded Lake Xvasa, and crossed Xyasalaml to Northern Rhodesia. He hunted lions, leopards, elephants, zebras, buffalo, rhino-

ceros. hippopotamus, not to mention deer of various sorts. We gather that the rhinoceros is the most dangerous of these'. "Though the brute creation almost invariably gives way to the human kind, the rhinoceros is not in this category. Unintentionally you may lash 1 1 mi up to rages in which all sense of fear is lost, and then the rhino is a devil unchained.” They visited a Residency up country, wliere a commissioner, while superintending, unarmbed, the firing of the grass had been .-suddenly attacked by a rhino, and had died of his injuries, lint it is rare lor other animals to take the aggressive unless deliberately provoked by mail. The big-game limiter is sometimes represented as a callous soulless 1 person, who slaughters inoffensive beasts in the name of sport. However. there seems to be another side to the question. Many of these creatures are unmitigated nests. Ihe lions and leopards carry off the natiies stock. The deer, elephant, rhinoceros.

:md hippopotamus ravage his crops, mid the three last-mentioned spoil more than they oat. Between them these “harmless” denizens of the wild do

an immense amount of damage, am the native welcomes their destruction H>' regards them much as the Australian regards the dingo, the fox, am the rabbit.