Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/305

 deer-stalking; but in his own words he found ‘the life of the wild hunter so far preferable to that of the mere sportsman’ that he obtained an ensigncy in the Royal Veteran Newfoundland Companies. Not finding the opportunities for sport in America which he expected, he exchanged in 1843 into the Cape Mounted Rifles, and once more found himself in Africa. He did not long remain in his new regiment, but resigned his commission at the close of the year, and purchasing a wagon and collecting a few followers, he spent the next five years hunting in the interior of South Africa. In 1848 he returned to England, and in 1850 he published his ‘Five Years of a Hunter's Life in the Far Interior of South Africa,’ a book which had an immense success, and made him the lion of the season. In 1851 he exhibited his trophies of success at the Great Exhibition. He then went about the country lecturing and exhibiting his lion skins for some years, and under the sobriquet of the ‘Lion Hunter’ he obtained great popularity, and made a good deal of money. In 1856 he published a condensed edition of his book as ‘The Lion Hunter of South Africa,’ and in 1858 he established himself at Fort Augustus on the Caledonian Canal, where his museum was a great attraction to all tourists. He was a man of great height and physical strength, with very Scotch features, and he seems to have had a Scotch premonition of death, for he ordered his coffin and made his will just before he died at Fort Augustus on 24 March 1866.

 CUMMING, THOMAS (d. 1774), quaker, commonly known as the ‘fighting quaker,’ was a private merchant engaged in the African trade. During a business voyage he contracted an acquaintance with the king of Legibelli (South Barbary), whom he found well disposed to English enterprise, and who, being exasperated with the French, had actually commenced a war against them. He requested the English to protect his trade, and on condition of receiving the sole privilege of trading with the country, Cumming agreed to exert his influence with the English government. After ascertaining the strength of the French positions on the coast, he returned to England, and having formed a plan for an expedition, presented it to the board of trade, by whom it was approved after a critical examination. Many obstacles were placed in his way by the government, but at length the ministry granted a military and naval force, though a much inferior one to that he considered necessary. This force was professedly put under the command of military officers, but Cumming really had the entire direction, and his local knowledge enabled him to guide it in such a manner that it proved entirely successful. Cumming had hoped, as he explained to the Society of Friends, that bloodshed might be avoided, and avowed that otherwise he would not have urged it. This hope, however, was fruitless, and he then took the entire blame on himself, but there is no reason to suppose he was disowned by the Friends. He died 29 May 1774.

 CUMMING, WILLIAM (fl. 1797–1823), portrait-painter, was a painter of repute in Dublin towards the close of the eighteenth century, and his female portraits were much admired. Some of his portraits have been engraved, notably James Cuffe, Lord Tyrawley, engraved in mezzotint by John Raphael Smith, Edward Cooke, under-secretary for Ireland, and John Doyle, both engraved in mezzotint by W. Ward. He painted a picture of Christ and Zebedee's Children, which was engraved for Macklin's bible by J. Holloway, and published in 1798. In 1821, when the Royal Hibernian Academy, after a protracted controversy, succeeded in obtaining a charter, Cumming was one of three artists elected by ballot to choose eleven others, and thus form the first fourteen academicians.

 CUMMING, WILLIAM (1822?–1855), the pioneer of modern ophthalmology, was the first to demonstrate that rays of light falling on the human retina might be reflected back to the eye of an observer, and that the fundus of the eye, till then a dark and hidden region, might, under certain conditions of illumination, become visible. This important fact was communicated by him to the Medico-Chirurgical Society of London in June 1846, in a paper ‘On a Luminous Appearance of the Human Eye,’ &c. He never obtained a view of the tissue and vessels of the retina. This was reserved for Helmholtz, who, in a tract of forty-three pages, described his method of viewing these structures by means of a polarising apparatus (‘Beschreibung eines Augenspiegels,’ &c., Berlin, 1851). This was afterwards superseded by a mirror, to which the now familiar name of ‘Ophthalmoscope’ was applied. It underwent many modifications