Theodore Roosevelt

African Game Trails Theodore Roosevelt

FOREWORD I SPEAK of Africa and goIden joys the joy of wandering through lonely lands the joy of hunting the mighty and terrible Iords of the wilderness, the cunning, the wary, and the grim. In these greatest of the worlds great hunting-grounds there are mountain peaks whose suns are dazzling under the equatorial sun swamps where the slime oozes and bubbles and festers in the steaming heat lakes Iike seas skies that burn above deserts where the iron desolation is shrouded from view by the wavering nockery of the mirage vast grassy plains where palins and thorn-trees fringe the dwindling streams mighty rivers rushing out of the heart of the continent through the sadness of endless marshes forests of gorgeous beauty, where death broods in the dark and silent depths. There are regions as healrhy as the northland and other regions, radiant with bright-hued flowers, birds and butterflies, odorous with sweet and heay scents, but, treacherous in their beauty, and sinister to human life. On the land and in the water there are dread brutes that feed on the flesh of man ancl among the lower things, rhat crawl, and fly, and sting, and bite, he finds swarming foes far more evil and deadly than any bears or reptile foes that kill his crops and his cattle, foes before which he himseif perishes in his hundreds of thousands...