Elephant Haunts. Being a Sportsman's Narrative of the Search after
Livingstone, with Scenes of Elephant, Buffalo, and Hippopotamus Hunting. By Henry Faulkner, late 17th Lancers. (Hurst and Blackett.) —This entertaining but somewhat wordy narrative is no bad supple- ment to Mr. Young's brief account of his search after Livingstone. Disappointed in his hopes of obtaining the post of leader, Mr. Faulkner accompanied the searching expedition as a volunteer, and appears to have done it good service ; turning all the energies set free by his unofficial position towards the search after elephants, hippopotami, antelopes of all sorts, buffalo, and here and there a stray tiger or leopard fell before his gun, but the hunger of his soul was not satisfied till he had shot the hard-skulled African elephant through the brain with a temple shot. This, he had been told, could not be done ; but he had scarcely passed tho place where Bishop Mackenzie sleeps of ter his labours at the junction of the Rue and Shire rivers, when he proved the contrary to his own entire satisfaction and to that of his followers, who showed their amazement and delight by the most frantic gestures, and were soon knee-deep in the victim's carcase, fighting like wild beasts over their spoil. It has not often, we should fancy, fallen to the lot of any man to kill four elephants out of one group with four successive shots. The negroes (sole witnesses of his prowess) might well cry out that "by and by elephant finish, by and by no more elephant." We mast own to a feeling of weariness at page after page of slaughter. However beneficial to hungry negroes, and enlivened by hairbreadth escapes on the part of the ven- turesome hunter, we think that the narrative would have been the better for a vigorous use of the scissors. It would have been well, too, if Mr. Faulkner had suppressed a tendency to find fault 'with the management of the expedition,—a tendency which does not show well in one who himself applied (but too late) for the leadership. On the whole, however, Mr. Faulkner has written a spirited narrative of some capital sport in newly discovered regions, and it will be appreciated by many an embryo Nimrod who can as yet bag large game only in imagination.
Previous page
