Page:Lake Ngami.djvu/27



CHAPTER I.

was at the close of the year 1849 that I left Gothenbourg, in a sailing vessel, for Hull, at which place I arrived in safety, after a boisterous and somewhat dangerous passage of about fourteen days' duration. Though a Swede by birth, I am half an Englishman by parentage; and it was with pleasure that I visited, for the second time, a country endeared to me by the ties of kindred and the remembrance of former hospitality.

My stay in England, however, was intended to be only of short duration. I carried with me thither a considerable collection of living birds and quadrupeds, together with numerous preserved specimens of natural history, the produce of many a long hunting excursion amid the mountains, lakes, and forests of my native country. These I was anxious to dispose of in England, and then proceed in my travels, though to what quarter of the globe I had scarcely yet determined.

From my earliest youth, my day-dreams had carried me into the wilds of Africa. Passionately fond of traveling, accustomed from my childhood to field sports and to the study of natural history, and (as I hope I may say with truth) desirous of rendering myself useful in my generation, I