Such is a specimen of the “sport” which the wilds of Africa offer to the ambitious hunter. That it is in some respects rather serious sport may be imagined from the description as well as from Mr. Cumming’s statement of his losses during his four expeditions into the interior. These were forty-five horses and seventy head of cattle, the value being at least $3,000. “I also,” he says, “lost about seventy of my dogs,” which would convey the idea of a considerable kennel, the dogs all told. But he usually had only about thirty at a time. Many were killed by lions, while elephants made way with a still larger number. The expeditions of Mr. Du Chaillu, an American naturalist, in Equatorial Africa, were more valuable to the cause of science than those of Mr. Cumming in South Africa, and scarcely less interesting as the explorations of a hunter. Like Cumming, he was a highly successful hunter, and he was also much more--a student of natural history imbued with a love of science and having a genius for it. As Mr. Cumming’s starting point was the extreme of South Africa, under English domination, Mr. Du Chaillu had his headquarters beneath the equator on the west coast, and under the immediate eyesight, so to speak, of the American Presbyterian Mission for the Gaboon country. Mr. Du Chaillu afterwards established his home in the Camma country, and building himself a little village of huts near the junction of the N’poulounay and Fernand Vas rivers, and not far from the coast, named it “Washington.” From the Gaboon and then from this African “city of Washington,” this celebrated traveller made several explorations of the interior, much of the time among idolatrous and cannibal tribes. Enduring many hardships, overcoming many almost insurmountable difficulties, he not only gave to the world an extremely interesting account of hunting expeditions but a description of the singular people and wonderful country he was the first white man to visit which forms a valued acquisition to the stock of geographical and scientific knowledge.[7] [7] It need not be stated to students of matters pertaining to Africa, that this gentleman’s “Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa” (published by the Harpers in 1868) is one of our most interesting books of travel. Whilst he was very successful in procuring specimens of most of the animals and birds in equatorial Africa to a distance of several hundred miles from the coast, he devoted special attention to hunting the ape, and was more successful in killing the species commonly known as the gorilla than any one else of Christendom has ever been. The greater difficulty of hunting the animal considered, he was as successful with the gorilla as Mr. Cumming had been with the elephant.