As the centuries passed it became more and more difficult to obtain sport in the thickly settled parts of Europe save in the vast game preserves of the Kings and great lords. These magnates of Continental Europe, down to the beginning of the last century, followed the chase with all the ardor of Gaston Phœbus; indeed, they erred generally on the side of fantastic extravagance and exaggeration in their favorite pursuit, turning it into a solemn and rather ridiculous business instead of a healthy and vigorous pastime; but they could hunt only the beasts of their own forests. The men who went on long voyages usually had quite enough to do simply as travellers; the occupation of getting into unknown lands, and of keeping alive when once in them, was in itself sufficiently absorbing and hazardous to exclude any chance of combining with it the role of sportsman. With the last century all this had changed. Even in the eighteenth century it began to change. The Dutch settlers at the Cape of Good Hope, and the English settlers on the Atlantic coast of North America, found themselves thrown back into a stage of life where hunting was one of the main means of livelihood, as well as the most exciting and adventurous of pastimes. These men knew the chase as men of their race had not known it since the days before history dawned; and until the closing decades of the last century the Americans and the Afrikanders of the frontier largely led the lives of professional hunters. Oom Paul and Buffalo Bill led very different careers after they reached middle age; but in their youth warfare against wild beasts and wild men was the most serious part of the life-work of both. They and their fellows did the rough pioneer work of civilization, under conditions which have now vanished for ever, and their type will perish with the passing of the forces that called it into being. But the big game hunter, whose campaigns against big game are not simply incidents in his career as a pioneer settler, will remain with us for some time longer; and it is of him and his writings that we wish to treat.