EVER since the days when Nimrod was a ‘mighty hunter,’ there has been a class of men who have pursued wild animals, not only for the sake of feeding, like wild beasts, upon their flesh, but out of pure love of the excitement attending the chase, a pride of mental and physical endurance which leads them to face boldly dangers and difficulties so discouraging to men of weaker mould, that to incur such hazard seems to them mere madness. Amongst those who have thus gone forth into the wilderness, the Anglo-Saxon race stands pre-eminent.

Nor is it for the sake of excitement alone that they put their lives in peril. Wherever the cause of science or commerce requires that discoveries should be made, or geographical problems solved, we find the Englishman foremost; venturing with his frail bark and his reindeer sled amongst the icebergs of a frozen ocean in search of a north-west passage: laboriously tracing the Nile to its source, in unknown lands, amongst a fierce and savage people; braving the tropical heats and deadly miasmas of Central Africa; or working their way across the arid deserts of Australia, to set up land-marks, and point the way to future discoverers.

And in every phase of their wandering life they are attentively watched by those who are unable to accompany them.