The Badminton Library
OF
SPORTS AND PASTIMES

EDITED BY
HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT, K.G.
ASSISTED BY ALFRED E. T. WATSON

BIG GAME SHOOTING
I.

THE LION’S LAST CHARGE

BIG GAME SHOOTING

BY

CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY

SIR SAMUEL W. BAKER, W. C. OSWELL, F. J. JACKSON,
WARBURTON PIKE, AND F. C. SELOUS

VOL. I.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES WHYMPER, J. WOLF
AND H. WILLINK, AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1894

All rights reserved

DEDICATION
TO
H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES

Badminton: May 1885.

Having received permission to dedicate these volumes, the Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes, to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, I do so feeling that I am dedicating them to one of the best and keenest sportsmen of our time. I can say, from personal observation, that there is no man who can extricate himself from a bustling and pushing crowd of horsemen, when a fox breaks covert, more dexterously and quickly than His Royal Highness; and that when hounds run hard over a big country, no man can take a line of his own and live with them better. Also, when the wind has been blowing hard, often have I seen His Royal Highness knocking over driven grouse and partridges and high-rocketing pheasants in first-rate workmanlike style. He is held to be a good yachtsman, and as Commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron is looked up to by those who love that pleasant and exhilarating pastime. His encouragement of racing is well known, and his attendance at the University, Public School, and other important Matches testifies to his being, like most English gentlemen, fond of all manly sports. I consider it a great privilege to be allowed to dedicate these volumes to so eminent a sportsman as His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and I do so with sincere feelings of respect and esteem and loyal devotion.

BEAUFORT.

BADMINTON

PREFACE

A few lines only are necessary to explain the object with which these volumes are put forth. There is no modern encyclopædia to which the inexperienced man, who seeks guidance in the practice of the various British Sports and Pastimes, can turn for information. Some books there are on Hunting, some on Racing, some on Lawn Tennis, some on Fishing, and so on; but one Library, or succession of volumes, which treats of the Sports and Pastimes indulged in by Englishmen—and women—is wanting. The Badminton Library is offered to supply the want. Of the imperfections which must be found in the execution of such a design we are conscious. Experts often differ. But this we may say, that those who are seeking for knowledge on any of the subjects dealt with will find the results of many years’ experience written by men who are in every case adepts at the Sport or Pastime of which they write. It is to point the way to success to those who are ignorant of the sciences they aspire to master, and who have no friend to help or coach them, that these volumes are written.

To those who have worked hard to place simply and clearly before the reader that which he will find within, the best thanks of the Editor are due. That it has been no slight labour to supervise all that has been written, he must acknowledge; but it has been a labour of love, and very much lightened by the courtesy of the Publisher, by the unflinching, indefatigable assistance of the Sub-Editor, and by the intelligent and able arrangement of each subject by the various writers, who are so thoroughly masters of the subjects of which they treat. The reward we all hope to reap is that our work may prove useful to this and future generations.

THE EDITOR.

CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE FIRST VOLUME

(Reproduced by Messrs. Walker & Boutall)

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

WOODCUTS IN TEXT

BIG GAME SHOOTING

¹ Springbuck. ² Steinbuck. ³ Blesbuck. ⁴ Reedbuck.

CHAPTER I
ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY

By Clive Phillipps-Wolley

It may be asked, as to these volumes, why ‘Big Game Shooting’ should find a place in a series devoted to British sports and pastimes, whereas, except the red deer, there is no big game in Great Britain?

It is true that there is no big game left in Britain; but if the game is not British, its hunters are, and it is hardly too much to say that, out of every ten riflemen wandering about the world at present from Spitzbergen to Central Africa, nine are of the Anglo-Saxon breed.

It may be asked, again, what justification there is for the animal life taken, and for the time and money spent in the pursuit of wild sport?

That, too, is an easy question to answer. Luckily for England, the old hunting spirit is still strong at home, and the men who, had they lived in Arthur’s time, might have been knights-errant engaged in some quest at Pentecost, are now constrained to be mere gunners, asking no more than that their hunting-grounds should be wild and remote, their quarry dangerous or all but unapproachable, and the chase such as shall tax human endurance, human craft, and human courage to the uttermost.

If in these days of ultra-civilisation an apology is needed for such as these, let it be that their sport does no man any harm; that it exercises all those masculine virtues which set the race where it is among the nations of the earth, and which but for such sport would rust from disuse; that if the hunter of big game takes life, he often enough stakes his own against the life he takes; and if he be one of the right sort, he never wastes his game.

Incidentally, however, the hunter does a good deal for his race and for the men who come after him; something for science, for exploration, and even for his worst enemy—civilisation.

In Africa, hunting and exploration have gone hand in hand; in America the hunters have explored, settled, and developed much of the country, replacing the buffalo with the shorthorn and the Hereford; while in India, not the least amongst those latent powers which enable us to govern our Asiatic fellow-subjects is the respect won by generations of English hunters from the native shikaries and hillmen.

From Africa to Siberia the story of exploration has never varied. The world’s pioneers have almost invariably belonged to one of two classes. It has been the love of sport, or the lust of gold, which has led men first to break in upon those solitudes in which nature and her wild children have lived alone since the world’s beginning. Hunters or gold prospectors still find the mountain passes, through which in later days the locomotives will rush and the world’s less venturous spirits come in time to reap their harvests and make fortunes in the footsteps of those who ask nothing better than to spend their strength and wealth in the first encounter with an untrodden world, living as hard as wolves, and content to think themselves rich in the possession of a few gnarled horns and grizzled hides. As for us who are Englishmen, it is well for us to remember that in most lands in which we shoot we are but guests, and the beasts we hunt are not only the property of the natives, but one of their most important sources of food supply. Bearing this in mind, we should be moderate in the toll we take of the great game, and considerate even of those who may not be strong enough to enforce their wishes. The recklessness of one man in a country where foreigners are few may suffice to damn a whole nation in the eyes of a prejudiced people, and it is worth while to recollect that any one of us who strays off the world’s beaten tracks may serve for a type of his nation to men who have never seen another sample of an Englishman.

Looked at from any point of view, the wholesale slaughter of big game must be condemned by every thinking man. The sportsman who in one season is lucky enough to obtain a dozen good heads does no harm to anybody, and probably does good to the bands of game in his district by killing off the oldest of the stags or rams. But the man who kills fifty or a hundred foolish ‘rhinos’ (beasts, according to Mr. Jackson, which any man can stalk) in one year, or scores of cariboo at the crossings during their annual migration in Newfoundland, or deer and sheep by the hundred in America, shocks humanity and does a grave injury to his class. The waste of good meat is quite intolerable; kindly natured men hate to hear of the infliction of needless pain, and waste of innocent animal life; good sportsmen recoil in disgust from a record of butchery misnamed sport, for, according to the very first article of their creed, it is the difficulty of the chase which gives value to the trophies. If there were no difficulties, no dangers, no hardships, then the sport would have no flavour and its prizes no value. The mere fact that a man can kill as many of any particular kind of animal as he pleases should be sufficient to make him let that beast alone, unless he wants it for food, as soon as he has secured (say) a couple of fine specimen heads. Finally, to look at this question from the lowest and most selfish standpoint, the wholesale slaughter of wild game in foreign countries should be discouraged unanimously by all who love the rifle, since men who kill or boast of having killed exceptionally large bags of big game in any country are extremely likely to arouse the natural and proper indignation of local legislators, who have it in their power to close their happy hunting grounds to all aliens for the fault of a few individuals, not by any means typical of, or in sympathy with, their class.

On the other hand, it would be well if some of those of our own race, who should know better, would be less ready to call other men butchers merely because they have killed large quantities of game. Everything depends upon the circumstances connected with the slaying. If a man needs and can utilise a hundred antelope, surely he has as good a right to kill them as if he were killing a hundred sheep for market. There are occasions when not only does the hunter’s skill win the regard of savages who value nothing in friend or foe more than real manhood, but it is absolutely necessary to kill game in order to keep a native following in food. Without the hunter’s skill, food would have to be bought or looted from hostile natives, a feud engendered which might end in the shedding of other blood than that of the beasts, and a serious obstacle be thus raised in the path of the pioneers of civilisation and trade.

Our big game sportsmen have made more friends than foes, have always contrived to feed their men, and the very greatest of them have never shed a drop of native blood. Where gallant Oswell or Selous have been, there are no blood feuds against the English to hamper an expedition of their countrymen.

So much for the ethics of Big Game Shooting; as to the practical side of it, let it be said at once that it is impossible upon paper to teach any man to become a successful big game hunter. Upon the hillside or in the forest, with an expert to guide him, with the floating mists to teach him something of the way of the winds, with game tracks or the game itself before him, each man has to learn for himself, and even then he learns more from his own mistakes than from anyone else. To be really successful a man wants so many things; he needs so many qualities combined in his own person. To be a good shot means but little. The man who can win prizes at Wimbledon may be a successful deer-stalker, but it by no means follows that he will be. He has one good quality in his favour, but even that quality varies with the varying conditions under which he shoots. With his pulses steady, his heart beating regularly, his wind sound, his digestion unimpaired, his eyes free from moisture, with the distances measured off for him, and with a bull’s-eye to shoot at, he may make phenomenal scores; but when he has been living upon heavy dampers and strong tea taken at irregular intervals, his digestion may become impaired. When he has toiled all day and come fast up a steep incline at the end of a long stalk, his pulse will not be steady, his sides may be heaving like those of a blown horse, his eye may be dimmed by a bead of sweat which will cling to his eyelash and fall salt and painful into his eye just when it should be at its clearest. The distances are not marked for him, and the atmosphere varies so much at different altitudes, that it is not always easy to judge how far he is from his quarry, and that quarry, instead of being marked in black and white for his convenience, has an awkward trick of being just the colour of the hillside, with an outline which at 200 yards melts into the background and becomes one with its surroundings.

Many a man who shoots well at a mark is a poor shot in the woods; but luckily the converse of this proposition is also true. Again, strength and endurance, steady nerve and quick eyes count for much, but they alone will not make a man successful.

The strong young hunter is often the worst. Likely enough he does the work for the work’s sake, laughs at mountain-sides, and, like a friend of our own, starts at dawn, travels all day, tells us at night of peaks at fabulous distances on which he has stood, but comes back empty-handed, simply because he is too strong, too fast, and runs over ground leaving behind him, or ‘jumping’ out of range, game which a feebler man might have seen when crawling slowly over the hillside or sitting down for a frequent rest. One really good Western sportsman we know advocates a very different system. ‘Camp,’ he says, ‘near where game is, look out for likely places, and then go and sit about near them all day long. If the game comes to you, you’ll probably get it; if it don’t you won’t, and you wouldn’t any way. Somehows,’ he generally adds, ‘them bull elicks allus did have longer legs than mine, d—n ’em.’

Perhaps a knowledge of natural history is almost better than either great physical powers or exceptional skill with the rifle. If you watch a first-rate tennis-player, it will seem to you that tennis is a very easy game. The second-rate player performs prodigies of activity to get into the right place in time, but the first-rate man never seems to be obliged to exert himself at all. He always is where he ought to be. So it is with the good man to hounds. His place at the fence is the easiest, and yet he never seems to swerve or pick his place. In every case it is the same. Knowledge of the game helps all the men in the same way, and each in his own fashion picks his place; but he picks it long beforehand. The tennis-player knows where the return must come, the hunting man sees the weak place by which he means to go out at the very moment that he comes in to a field, and in like manner the big game hunter gets to where the big game is because he has calculated beforehand where it ought to be, and experience and knowledge of the beasts’ habits, and a certain instinct which some men have, do not mislead him.

First, then, study the habits of wild animals generally. They are much the same all the world over, and a man may learn a great deal by the side of an English covert, when the rabbits and pheasants are running before the beaters, which he can turn to good use when hunting bigger game.

Why do you suppose some men always seem to get more shots than others; why do the birds always rise better to them than to you? Pure luck you think, and they perhaps don’t deny it. Don’t believe it. The true sportsman knows by instinct what tussock of grass will hold a rabbit as he goes by it, and if a rabbit is there he won’t let it lie whilst he passes. You won’t see him swing round, saving himself a bit and leaving the likeliest corner in a big field unbeaten. The birds would have sneaked down into the ditch and stopped there whilst you wheeled by thirty or forty paces off, but our friend puts them up; and if when those rabbits at the covert-side were bolting just out of range between you and him, you think he dropped his white pocket-handkerchief on the drive by mistake, you don’t know your man. That handkerchief just turned them enough to bring them close by him, and he had awful luck you know, and fired six shots to your one.

That is the way in big game shooting too. Partly from experience, and partly by instinct, some men know where to look for a beast, and know the ways of it when found. Study then the habits of beasts generally to begin with, and then those of the particular beast you are going to hunt. Learn what it feeds on at different seasons of the year, and where its food is to be found; learn at what time of day it feeds, and at what time it lies down. Most animals feed early and late, just at dawn and just at the edge of night, sleeping when the sun warms them, using what Nature sends them instead of supplying the place of the sun with a blanket as we do. Many beasts are almost entirely nocturnal in their feeding hours, and these not only such as one would naturally expect to prowl by night—tigers, lions and suchlike—but ibex and mountain beasts which feed on nothing worse than grass. Just at and before dawn most beasts are up and feeding, probably because that is the coldest time in the twenty-four hours; the beasts become chilled and restless, and Nature warns them that food and motion are the best cures for the evils they are suffering from.

Learn too, with the utmost care for yourself, upon which of its senses each particular beast relies, for all do not rely upon the same sense. The sense of smell is perhaps the most universal safeguard of the beasts which men hunt, but all are not as keen of scent as the cariboo, nor all as wonderfully quick and long-sighted as the antelope, of whom Western men say that he can tell you what bullet your rifle is loaded with about as soon as you can make him out on the skyline. A bear is so short-sighted as to be almost blind on occasion, and no beasts seem capable of quickly identifying objects which are stationary, though all catch the least movement in a second. This of course is where the man who rests often gets an advantage. If a beast is stationary in timber, for instance, you may often look at him for a minute after your Indian has found him before making him out; but if he but flick his ear or turn a tine of his antler ever so little, it will catch your eye at once.

In still hunting for wapiti or other timber-loving deer, a broken stick will warn every beast within a quarter of an hour’s tramp; but on a mountain-side, where stones are constantly falling from the action of sun and wind and rain, ibex, sheep and other mountain beasts will often take but little or no notice of the stones you dislodge during your climb. Only be careful that these stones do not fall too often or at too regular intervals.

A CLOSE SHOT

In Scotland stalking is almost the only form of hunting deer; in America and other wild countries there are two principal forms of sport—stalking and still hunting; the one practised in comparatively open country and in the mountains, and the other in those dense forests where, partly from choice and partly because it has been much hunted, most of the big game now harbours. In this series stalking has already been dealt with, so that with this form it is only necessary to deal briefly here. The wind is the stalker’s deadliest foe, and in many of the countries known best to the writer (sheep countries for the most part) there are days in each week when it is wiser to stay in camp or hunt in the timber down below, rather than risk disturbing game when the winds are playing the devil in Skuloptin. Take your Indian’s advice, and stop at home on such days as these; play picquet with your friend, look after your trophies, or write up your diary.

To any but the youngest hunters it seems superfluous to say that you must hunt up or across the wind; to remind them of what a score of authorities have said before about the lessons to be learnt from the drifting mist-wreaths; to warn them to take care that they see the beast before the beast sees them, and to this end to be careful in coming over a rise in the ground; to put only just so much of their head above the skyline as will enable them to see the country beyond, and even then to bring that small part of their body up very slowly and under cover of some friendly bush-tussock or boulder. In eighteen years’ hunting the writer has met many men who might be forgiven for believing that wild game never lies down, for whenever they have seen it, it has been on its feet, looking at them. And no wonder, for some of them would even ride up to the top of a bluff before looking to see what lay in the valley beyond. And yet, even after such a mistake as this, there is a chance sometimes of retrieving your error if the wind is in your favour. If, for instance, in riding from camp to camp you suddenly come in full view of a stag, with a hind or two, walking in the early morning along the ridge of the next bluff to that upon which you and your Indians are riding, say a word to your men, and let them either ride slowly on or stop absolutely stationary in the same spot, whilst you slide out of your saddle and creep away on your belly amongst the grass. Above all, they must keep in full view of the stag, and if they do this, in nine cases out of ten the stag will not notice that you have gone, and whilst he stares intently at the strange objects which he knows to be at a safe distance from himself, you will have time to get round and make a successful stalk. Even the hinds will be too intent on watching the other men to keep a proper look-out in your direction. And this brings up another point. Take care of the hinds and of those lean grey-faced ewes. The ram and the stag are blunderers and reckless, especially in love-time; but the ewes are as suspicious and wary as schoolmistresses, and must always be watched carefully. If for a moment you see the grey faces turn in your direction, keep still; keep still as a statue, even though you have raised yourself upon your hands to peer over and have found out too late that your palms are pressing upon the thorny sides of a bunch of prickly pears. It will come to an end at last, though that fixed regard seems never ending; but in any case, if you want a shot you must be still, for if you try to lower your head and hide whilst they are looking at you, you might just as well go home. This rule applies in another instance. If you should by chance come upon a beast unawares, stand stock still at once; don’t try to hide if it is a deer; don’t try to bolt if it is something more dangerous. If you stand still, beasts are slow to identify objects, and your deer may not be badly scared or your bear may pass on with only a suspicious stare; but if you attempt to hide, your deer will certainly show you his paces over fallen timber, or your bear or tiger if bad tempered may charge.

But you ought very seldom to run into beasts in this way, if you keep your eyes open for ‘sign,’ i.e. tracks, droppings, freshly broken twigs, and places where deer have been browsing, and if, as you ought to, you take a good long time to scan every valley carefully before you enter it. Of course you must not keep your eyes on the ground looking for tracks—this is a fatal trick of a ‘tender foot’—but you can see tracks well enough with eyes looking well ahead of you; and indeed, if you are following a trail, you will find it more easily by looking for it yards ahead of you than you will by searching for it at your feet.

MOLOPO RIVER

Again, in looking for game you have at first to learn what to look for. The deer you are likely to see will not be standing broadside on, with head aloft like Landseer’s ‘Monarch,’ but will be a long blur of brown on a hillside, with head stretched out almost flat upon the ground in front of it, crouching (if it has seen you) more like a rabbit than a lordly stag, or else it will be but a patch of brown which moves between the boles of the pines, or a flickering ear, or a gleaming inch or so of antler, or, worse than all, a flaunting white flag bobbing over the fallen timber if it is a deer, or a dull white disc moving up towards the skyline if it is a sheep which you have stirred from amongst those grey boulders for one of which you mistook it.

Over the fallen timber

A common error which men make is to depend too much upon the eyes of their gillie. That an Indian has better sight than a white man is an article of many a man’s creed. I believe it to be a mistake. The Indian is trained, he knows what to look for, and is looking for it. The average white man who takes an Indian with him does not know what to look for, and is relying upon his Indian’s eyes. Consequently the Indian sees the game first, tries to point it out to his master, who finds it just about the time that the beast has stood as long as it means to, and is on the move by the time that the white man, flurried by his Indian’s oft-repeated ‘Shoot! shoot!’ has found out what he is to shoot at. Of course the result is a miss. If, instead of allowing his Indian to go ahead and do the spying, the gunner had gone ahead, he would in the course of a few weeks have learnt to find his own game, and when he had found it he would have secured for himself those first invaluable seconds when the beast was still standing uncertain of danger and for the moment at his mercy. If only a man is enough of a woodsman to find his way back to camp and to find again the game he has killed, he will do far better to go alone than with the best of guides. Two pair of eyes may be better than one, but one pair of feet make less noise than two, and the man who finds his own game, and chooses his own time to shoot, is far more likely to kill than the man who presses the trigger at the dictation of an excitable redskin. That ‘Shoot, shoot’ has lost many a head of game.

Don’t be in a hurry when you have sighted game. If it has not seen you it is not likely to move, and if it has you can’t catch it. Take your time. Light a pipe if the wind is right, and if it isn’t the deer will object to your smell quite as much as to the smell of tobacco. Having lighted your pipe, con the ground over carefully, and plan out your stalk at your leisure. It may be that you have come across sheep in an utterly unapproachable position, lying down for their midday siesta. If so, lie down for yours too, keeping an eye open to watch their movements. Towards evening first one old ram will get up and stretch himself (and perhaps turn round and lie down again) and then another; but eventually they will feed off slowly over the brow, and then you can run in and make your stalk. If there is a good head in the band your patience will not be without its reward. Again, when you have made your stalk and are safe behind your boulder at 150 or 200 yards from your beast, don’t be in a hurry. If your eyes are dim and you cannot see your foresight clearly, shut your eyes and wait. There is no more reason why the beasts should see you now than half an hour ago. Wait till your hand is steady and your eye clear; don’t look too much at the coveted horns (as my gillies always said that I did); shoot not at the whole beast, but at the vital part behind or through the shoulder; and remember that you have worked days perhaps for the chance you will either take or miss in the next few seconds. Remember that a man shoots over three times for every once he shoots too low. Put your cap under your rifle if you are going to shoot from a rock rest; shoot from a rest whenever you can, and if you miss the first shot, do as the Frenchman wanted to when pheasant shooting, i.e. wait until he stops. If it is a ram or a deer, unless he has seen or winded you, it is a thousand to ten that he will stop within 50 yards or so to look back to see what frightened him before leaving the country. When he stops you will get another chance at a stationary object, and one shot of this kind is worth a good many ‘on the jump.’ If a beast does not look likely to stand again after the first shot, a sharp whistle will sometimes stop him.

You will hear, especially from Americans, who very often can shoot uncommonly well with the Winchester, and from Indians, who are the poorest shots in the world, of extraordinary shots at long ranges. Pay no attention to them. If you cannot get within 200 yards of game, except antelope in an open country, you are a poor stalker; and rely upon it more game is killed within 80 yards than is fired at over 200. Indians get what game they kill, not by their fine shooting at long ranges, but by their clever creeping and stalking. At the same time, there is a limit to everything, and if you attempt to get too close, a glimpse of your cap, which would only make a deer stare at 150 yards, will make him dash off as if wolves were after him at 50 yards.

Having dropped your stag, lie still (if you have wounded him only, this is still more necessary) and reload, as many a man has been terribly disappointed at seeing a deer which he considered was ‘in the bag’ get up and go off from under the very muzzle of an unloaded rifle. But your stalk may end without your getting a shot. Some puff of wind of which you had no suspicion may warn your quarry before you get within range of him, and if this happens, watch which way he goes, and do you go by another way, for he will put every beast he passes in his flight upon the ‘qui vive.’

In case of wounded game do not be in too great a hurry to follow it. A wounded beast which is pressed will go on travelling just out of range of you until night falls, even though you can see a hind leg, broken high up, swinging loosely at every step he takes; but the same beast will lie down very soon if he has not seen or winded his enemy; his wound will stiffen, and in an hour he will be easy enough to stalk again and kill.

Skin and pack

When you kill your stag, don’t cut his throat, as a Tartar would do, high up, thereby spoiling the head for mounting, but plunge your knife into his chest. This will let out the blood and not spoil the neck. If, when you kill, you are far from home, and want to pack your venison home yourself, the Indian fashion of packing and carrying is the simplest that I know. It is done thus:—

After grallocking, skin your deer and cut off his head. Skin well down the legs, cutting off the feet at the fetlock joint, and spread the skin out with the hair downwards. Now cut from a bush near by a stick about as thick as your thumb, about three inches shorter than the width of the skin just behind the forelegs. Lay this on the skin and stretch the skin over it, driving in the points of the stick so as to hold the skin taut at the width of the stick. Next cut two or three little holes in the skin of each hind leg, and sew the two legs together by pushing a small twig through alternate holes in the skin of either leg. This will make the hind legs into a loop or handle. Now cut up what meat you want into joints of convenient size, pack them neatly on the skin behind the stick, fold up your pack and bring the stick through your loop, so that the ends of it overlap and hold against the loop; put the loop over your forehead or your shoulders, and there you are with a fairly convenient satchel full of meat on your back, the hairy side of the skin against your coat, and a sufficiently soft strap of skin across forehead or chest to carry the weight. All this can be done on the spot with no more adjuncts than your skinning knife and a bush to cut twigs from. The only difficulty is that the head must be arranged as an extra pack or must be called for on a subsequent occasion.

But your beast, though down, may not be dead, and apart from the caution already given to load before going up to a fallen beast, there is another worth giving. Many a man has lost his life by being too anxious to handle his prize. One instance of a fine young fellow maimed for life by a panther whose mate he had killed, and whom he was too anxious to handle without sufficient investigation of the position, occurs to me as I write, and an attempt of my own to turn over a wapiti which was not quite dead elicited such a vigorous kick from the leg I was hauling upon as sent me flying some yards into the scrub. If the deer had had free play for his leg, he might have done worse than make me a laughing stock for my Indians.

When you get your shot be careful where you place it, and if the beast is moving towards you, let him pass before firing, if possible. If it is only a deer, a raking shot, striking him even a little far back and travelling transversely through him, will be much more likely to go through vital organs and stop him than one fired from in front; and, besides, a shot of this kind is not so likely to reveal the shooter at once to the beast and elicit a charge, if the beast is a dangerous one, as when fired right into his face.

Don’t, unless absolutely compelled to, fire at dangerous game above you. A wounded beast naturally comes down hill, and you are likely to be in its way if you fire from below; besides, a wounded beast will come quicker down hill than up. If your beast should charge you, stand still and go on shooting. Your chance may be a poor one, but in nine cases out of ten it is the best you have got.

Interlaced antlers

But if after all your care, and even after you have heard (or think that you have heard) the bullet smack upon your stag’s shoulder, he should show absolutely no sign of being hit, except perhaps a slight shiver or contraction of his muscles—if even he should turn and bolt at headlong speed—do not be at once discouraged; no, not even if you should follow him for many hundred yards without finding a single splash of blood upon the trail. Don’t listen to your Indian, if you have reason to think that you held straight, even though appearances justify his assertion that you made a clean miss. That little spasmodic shiver is a hopeful sign. When you see your stag do this, you may be very sure that he is hard hit in a vital spot, and he will not go far. It he starts off at racing pace, he will probably pitch over on his head, dead, at the end of a hundred yards; and even if he does not bleed at first, follow him persistently: flesh wounds often bleed more freely than more dangerous ones, and it is quite on the cards that you will at last find that your stag was hit after all (far back, perhaps), and you may get him, although the shot hardly deserved such a prize. In any case it is your duty as an honest sportsman to do your utmost to find out whether you have wounded a beast, and, if so, to do all in your power to secure him and put an end to his pain, rather than leave him to take a better chance which may offer.

The greater part of what has been written so far applies either to shooting big game generally or to stalking: a word or two may well be devoted to still hunting—a form of the chase much practised in America and other well-wooded countries.

Still Hunting

Almost every fresh form of sport brings a fresh set of muscles, a hitherto little used sense or mental quality, into play, so that an all-round sportsman should be that very exceptional animal, a man in the full possession of all his faculties.

On the mountains a man depends upon his feet and upon his eyes; in the woods he has to place at least as much reliance upon his ears as upon his eyes; whilst his feet in still hunting are to the beginner the very curse and bane of his existence.

Except in wet weather or to a redskin, still hunting is an impossibility in any true sense of the term. When for weeks in Colorado there has not fallen one drop of rain, when sun and wind have parched the whole face of Nature, every twig and every fallen leaf upon the forest floor become absolutely explosive, and the merest touch will make them ‘go off’ with a report loud enough to be heard in London.

Damp weather is, then, the first essential for successful still hunting; but even then, when the leaves crush noiselessly under foot and fallen twigs bend instead of snapping, the utmost patience and care are necessary.

With a pair of good shooting boots, English made, with wide welts and plenty of nails in them—boots, for choice, which would run about two to the acre—with his rifle over his shoulder, and a handful of loose change in the pocket of his new American overalls, any average young man may go confidently into the best woods in America, certain that in a fortnight of hard work he will see nothing except what Van Dyke calls ‘the long jumps’ (i.e. tracks of startled deer) or those waving white flags popping over the fallen logs which those gunners only may hope to stop who habitually shoot snipe with a Winchester.

The man who is generally successful as a still hunter is he who knows the haunts and habits of the deer, who travels slowly in the woods, constantly stopping to listen and look ahead, who not only takes care to wear clothes of the softest material, with moccasins or tennis-shoes upon his feet, but who always has a hand ready to move an obstinate briar or obstructive rampike gently out of his way before it has time to rasp against his clothes or trip him and pitch him upon his head.

The first thing to remember in entering upon this sport is that every live thing in the woods is watching and listening at least three parts of its waking life, and that your only chance of success is to catch it off its guard in those rare moments when it is either feeding or moving, and therefore making a noise itself. A moving object is more easily seen than a stationary one, therefore do you stand or sit still from time to time among thick cover on some ridge or other commanding position, and watch the woods, peer through the thickets, and make certain that they are untenanted, before you blunder through them. When a log upon which your eyes have been dwelling idly for several minutes gets up as you move, and goes off with a snort, before you can get your rifle to your shoulder, you will realise more thoroughly how hard it is to distinguish stationary game in cover. Keep your ears, too, on the alert: a bear will move through a dry azalea bush, when he pleases, almost less noisily than a blackbird, and his great soft feet make far less sound on the dead leaves than yours do. Slow ears are almost as bad as slow eyes in still hunting; but do not condemn either your eyes or ears as worse than the natives’ until the eyes have learned from experience what to take note of, and the ears which are the sounds worth listening to. In time the language of the forest will become plain to you, whether it is spoken in the voices of birds and beasts, in the rustlings and scurryings amongst the bushes, or written in tracks upon the great white page of new-fallen snow at your feet; but at first your ears will send many a false message to your brain.

In the intensity of the stillness the fir cones which the squirrels drop make you start, expecting to see the bushes divide for a bull moose at least to pass through them: at night, when you are watching by the river for bear, you think that you hear distinctly the ‘splosh, splosh’ of the grizzly’s feet as he wades down the shallows towards you. Not a bit of it: it is only a foolish kelt who has run himself aground and is trying to kick himself off again into deep water. On the other hand, that grating of one bough against another which you fancied that you heard may have been a ‘bull elk’ burnishing his antlers against a cottonwood-tree, that far-away whistle of the wind may have been a fragment of a forest monarch’s love-call, and that angry squirrel across the canyon was actually chattering not because he had seen you, but because he was disturbed by a bear passing by the log on which he was sitting.

But the language of the woods can only be learnt by residence amongst them, and this is especially true of the written language of tracks, which is to my mind one of the few things utterly beyond a white man’s powers ever thoroughly to master. Such proficiency as a man may acquire in tracking he must acquire for himself in the woods, since any essay upon it would need more illustrations than words to make the meaning plain.

Fishing is said to require patience. Believe me, still hunting requires more. Although you have toiled all day and seen nothing; although you are hot, ‘played out,’ and therefore intensely irritable (perhaps you have even a touch of fever upon you); although every log on your way home ‘barks’ your shins, and every tendril clings to your ankle—you must keep your temper; and even when that thorny creeper hooks you by the fleshy part of your nose, you must not swear—at least, not aloud. If you do, at the very moment that the words leave your lips, the only beast you have seen all day will get up with a contemptuous snort from the other side of the bush in front of you.

But when all is written that can be written upon ‘still hunting,’ there is still much which can only be taught in the woods—or, if on paper, then it has been done already, as well as man could possibly do it, in the pages of the best book ever written by an American, Van Dyke’s ‘Still Hunter.’ I am glad to have a chance of acknowledging my indebtedness to this author. Whatever I know of still hunting I have learned from his book and from experience, and have never yet known my two teachers disagree.

There is only one word which I would add here, but it is the most important that I shall write. There is one danger in still hunting in the woods more terrible than any other which the big game hunter can encounter: the danger, I mean, of accidentally shooting his fellow-man.

Make a rule for yourself before you go into the woods, and keep it as the first of sylvan commandments: Never, under any pretence whatever, pull your trigger until you know not only what you are shooting at, but also at what part of your beast you are shooting.

Once in a while the observance of this rule may lose you a beast which you might have crippled, and eventually secured if you had taken a snap shot at the grey thing which you saw moving in the bushes. But, on the other hand, instead of killing a bear or a buck, it is much more likely that your snap shot will wound some poor devil of a hind, who will sneak away to die in anguish somewhere in the thick covert where none but the jackal will benefit by her death; or else you may do as I once actually did—hit a bear in the seat of his dignity, thereby arousing his very righteous indignation in a way that is dangerous to the offending party; or, worse still, you may (as I nearly did) fire upon your own gillie or friend, whose moccasined footfall is very like a bear’s tread, and whose sin in wandering across your beat would be too severely punished by death.

In all seriousness, it has always seemed to me that any man who, whilst out shooting, kills another in mistake for game deserves to be tried for his life, unless he be a very young beginner—and young beginners should hunt by themselves. There is no excuse for shooting a man. If the shooter could not tell that that at which he fired was a human being, much less could he tell at what part of his beast he was shooting, and a random shot ‘into the brown’ of a beast is unsafe, unsportsmanlike, and brutally cruel.

Finally, do not be tempted to use complicated sights in still hunting. When you have followed deer under pines heavy with snow, through sal-lal bush which looks like deep billows of the same, only to find, the first time, that your Lyman sight is down, and the second time that though erect the peephole is full of ice, you will recognise the merits of a Paradox with the simplest sights for wood shooting in any weather as thoroughly as the writer does, and whilst admitting the merits of the Lyman sight for long-range shooting in the open, eschew all but such simple sights in timber.

There are, of course, other ways of hunting big game besides those already dealt with. Almost any game may be driven, from lions in Somaliland and tigers in the Terai to chamois in the Alps and sheep in North America, and there is no doubt that sufficient excitement and a good deal of sport may be got out of the day’s work; but, after all, the beaters who out-climb the Spanish ibex (as described by Mr. Chapman in his ‘Wild Spain’) and the natives who risk their lives in the driving, have always seemed to the present writer to be the men who did the work, and were principally responsible for the success of the day’s sport. To the guns who are posted by the organiser of the beat little advice can be given, except to obey orders, stick to their posts, be careful not to shoot at anything until it has passed them—or, at any rate, at anything which is in such a position with regard to the beaters and other guns as to make it unsafe to fire—to keep their attention concentrated upon the business in hand, to make all arrangements for concealment and ease in shooting directly they are posted, and then to keep quiet. There is not quite enough in this form of sport for the gun to do to please some men, but de gustibus non est disputandum.

Night shooting is another form of sport, sometimes rendered necessary by the shyness and nocturnal habits of such beasts as the grizzly and the Caucasian ibex. There are charms in night watching peculiar to the hour, which appeal particularly to the naturalist and lover of outdoor life; there is a certain fascination in the mystery of the night, the gloom of the great woods, and the awful stillness of the white peaks; while the children of the forest always seem more natural and less suspicious at night than at any other time. But it needs every charm which the night can boast to tempt a man to sit hour after hour in the shadow, without stirring, without speaking, without even thinking of anything except the sport in hand, whilst the rain runs down his spine in a strong stream, or a cold wind catches his body, heated by the tramp to the ambuscade, and slowly freezes it. If you must shoot at night, be careful about the wind: find out as well as you are able from what quarter you may expect your bear, and take care that your wind does not reach him before he reaches the carcase by which you are hidden. Choose a spot where you have some chance of making out his outline against the sky if he should come, and whether you are watching by a carcase or by a salmon pool, be satisfied with a distant inspection of the bait, i.e.—don’t go and walk about all round it, &c.

Bears are especially shy of returning to a carcase when they know that men are about, one grizzly that I know of in British Columbia having defeated a very well-known Indian sportsman by making a circuit round the carcase before coming in to feed. If in that circuit he caught no taint of human kind upon the night air, he used to come in and sup; but if he found that I——y was on guard, he used to go quietly home to a canyon down below, and wait for a more favourable opportunity. The tracks in the morning told the whole story, of course, as plainly as if the unfortunate sportsman had been a witness of the performance.

The principal difficulties in this kind of shooting are to keep sufficiently quiet to induce your bear to come, and to see your sights sufficiently to kill him, even at short ranges, when he has come.

Go to the spot as lightly clad as possible, carrying any spare things you can on your arm; don’t hurry or overheat yourself on the way to your ambush, and put on a spare flannel shirt or coat, or whatever it is you are carrying, before you begin to feel chilled. Take a little sheet of macintosh with you to secure you a dry seat, and if you have no fancy night sights on your rifle, you can make a rough but serviceable one by twisting white string or cotton with a large knot in it round the muzzle of your rifle, while the thumb and finger of your left hand, as they embrace your rifle barrels, may be held a little apart to make a very coarse backsight. This is only a more or less clumsy Indian device, but it is considerably better than nothing if you get caught in the dark with no better appliances. After all, a sport which keeps you up all night, and in camp without any exercise all day, and which depends for success so entirely upon the good will of the bear, is not one to hanker after.

By the way, when you have shot your bear (if you should shoot him), and when you have taken his hide off, be careful how you pack it upon any ordinary pony. A spark applied to a powder magazine is hardly more astounding in its effects than the application of a fresh bear-skin to the back of some of the meekest of cayuses. A perfect Dobbin which belonged to the writer shook his faith in horseflesh for ever by cutting his legs from under him as if they had been carried away by a round shot, merely because Dobbin had been asked somewhat suddenly to carry the hide of a two-year-old black bear.

Poor old Sam

In all American sport, dogs are used from time to time by the trappers and meat hunters who make hunting a business, and a thoroughly broken collie, such as accompanied the writer and Mr. Arnold Pike in an expedition to Colorado, would be invaluable to any still hunter, as this dog would not run in without orders, would precede his master at a slow walk in timber, regularly pointing in any direction from which he got wind of a deer, would take his owner up to it at a walk, would run a wounded beast to bay, follow and worry at the heels of a bear, and keep the camp secure from the inroads of inquisitive strangers or the all-devouring burros of our train. But such dogs as ‘Pup’ are rare, and the old gentleman to whom he belonged informed me that an offer of $500 for him would not be entertained, though his own whole ambition in life was to make double that sum to buy a farm and settle down, as at 65 he was beginning to think that he was almost too old to stay all the year in the woods. Poor old Sam! When one is too old for the woods, it should be almost time to ‘turn in’ for that last sleep.

CHAPTER II
SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO

By W. Cotton Oswell

WILLIAM COTTON OSWELL: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

By Sir Samuel W. Baker

One man alone was left who could describe from personal experience the vast tracts of Southern Africa and the countless multitudes of wild animals which existed fifty years ago in undisturbed seclusion; the ground untrodden by the European foot; the native unsuspicious of the guile of a white intruder. This man, thus solitary in this generation, was the late William Cotton Oswell. He had scarcely finished the pages upon the fauna of South Africa when death seized him (May 1, 1893) and robbed all those who knew him of their greatest friend. His name will be remembered with tears of sorrow and profound respect.

Although Oswell was one of the earliest in the field of South African discovery, his name was not world-wide, owing to his extreme modesty, which induced him to shun the notoriety that is generally coupled with the achievements of an explorer. Long before the great David Livingstone became famous, when he was the simple unknown missionary, doing his duty under the direction of his principal, the late Rev. Robert Moffat, whose daughter he married, Oswell made his acquaintance while in Africa, and became his early friend.

At that time Oswell with his companion Murray allied themselves with Livingstone to discover a reported lake of the unknown interior, together with Mrs. Livingstone and their infantine family. This expedition was at the private cost of Oswell and Murray; but, in grateful remembrance of the assistance rendered by Livingstone in communicating with the natives and in originating the exploration, Oswell sent him a present of a new waggon and a span of splendid oxen (sixteen animals), in addition to a thorough outfit for his personal requirements.

Livingstone, in the ‘Zambesi and its Tributaries,’ dwelt forcibly upon the obligation imposed upon him by Oswell’s generosity; but, having submitted the manuscript to his friend for revision, Oswell insisted upon disclaiming the title of a benefactor. After the discovery of the Lake ’Ngami by Livingstone and his party, Oswell received the medal of the French Geographical Society; he was therefore allied with Livingstone, who was the first explorer of modern times to direct attention to the lake system of Africa, which has been developed within the last forty years by successive travellers.

Oswell was not merely a shooter, but he had been attracted towards Africa by his natural love of exploration, and the investigation of untrodden ground. He was absolutely the first white man who had appeared upon the scene in many portions of South Africa which are now well known. His character, which combined extreme gentleness with utter recklessness of danger in the moment of emergency, added to complete unselfishness, ensured him friends in every society; but it attracted the native mind to a degree of adoration. As the first-comer among lands and savage people until then unknown, he conveyed an impression so favourable to the white man that he paved the way for a welcome to his successors. That is the first duty of an explorer; and in this Oswell well earned the proud title of a ‘Pioneer of Civilisation.’

As these few lines are not a biography, but merely a faint testimony to one whose only fault was the shadowing of his own light, I can sincerely express a deep regret that his pen throughout his life was unemployed. No one could describe a scene more graphically, or with greater vigour; he could tell his stories with so vivid a descriptive power that the effect was mentally pictorial; and his listeners could feel thoroughly assured that not one word of his description contained a particle of exaggeration.

I have always regarded Oswell as the perfection of a Nimrod. Six feet in height, sinewy and muscular, but nevertheless light in weight, he was not only powerful, but enduring. A handsome face, with an eagle glance, but full of kindliness and fearlessness, bespoke the natural manliness of character which attracted him to the wild adventures of his early life.

He was a first-rate horseman, and all his shooting was from the saddle, or by dismounting for the shot after he had run his game to bay.

In 1861, when I was about to start on an expedition towards the Nile sources, Oswell, who had then retired from the field to the repose of his much-loved home, lent me his favourite gun, with which he had killed almost every animal during his five years’ hunting in South Africa. This gun was a silent witness to what its owner had accomplished. In exterior it looked like an ordinary double-barrelled rifle, weighing exactly ten pounds; in reality it was a smooth-bore of great solidity, constructed specially by Messrs. Purdey & Co. for Mr. Oswell. This useful gun was sighted like a rifle, and carried a spherical ball of the calibre No. 10; the charge was six drachms of fine-grained powder. There were no breech-loaders in those days, and the object of a smooth-bore was easy loading, which was especially necessary when shooting from the saddle. The spherical ball was generally wrapped in either waxed kid or linen patch; this was rolled rapidly between the hands with the utmost pressure; the folds were then cut off close to the metal with scissors, and the bullet was again rolled as before. The effect was complete; the covering adhered tightly to the metal, which was now ready for ramming direct upon the powder-charge, without wads or other substance intervening. In this manner a smooth-bore could be loaded with great rapidity, provided that the powder-charge was made up separately in the form of a paper cartridge, the end of which could be bitten off, and the contents thrust into the barrel, together with the paper covering. The ball would be placed above, and the whole could be rammed down by a single movement with a powerful loading rod if great expedition should be necessary. Although the actual loading could thus be accomplished easily, the great trouble was the adjustment of the cap upon the nipple, which with an unsteady horse was a work of difficulty.

This grand old gun exhibited in an unmistakable degree the style of hunting which distinguished its determined owner. The hard walnut stock was completely eaten away for an inch of surface; the loss of wood suggested that rats had gnawed it, as there were minute traces of apparent teeth. This appearance might perhaps have been produced by an exceedingly coarse rasp. The fore-portion of the stock into which the ramrod was inserted was so completely worn through by the same destructive action, that the brass end of the rod was exposed to view. The whole of this wear and tear was the result of friction with the ‘wait-a-bit’ thorns!

Oswell invariably carried his gun across the pommel of his saddle when following an animal at speed. In this manner at a gallop he was obliged to face the low scrubby ‘wait-a-bits,’ and dash through these unsparing thorns, regardless of punishment and consequences, if he were to keep the game in view, which was absolutely essential if the animal were to be ridden down by superior pace and endurance. The walnut stock thus brought into hasty contact with sharp thorns became a gauge, through the continual friction, which afforded a most interesting proof of the untiring perseverance of the owner, and of the immense distances that he must have traversed at the highest speed during the five years’ unremitting pursuit of game upon the virgin hunting-grounds of Southern Africa. I took the greatest care of this gun, and entrusted it to a very dependable follower throughout my expedition of more than four years. Although I returned the gun in good condition, the ramrod was lost during a great emergency. My man (a native) was attacked, and being mobbed during the act of loading, he was obliged to fire at the most prominent assailant before he had time to withdraw his ramrod. This passed through the attacker’s body, and was gone beyond hope of recovery.

There could not have been a better form of muzzle-loader than this No. 10 double-barrel smooth-bore. It was very accurate at fifty yards, and the recoil was trifling with the considerable charge of six drams of powder. This could be increased if necessary, but Oswell always remained satisfied, and condemned himself, but not his gun, whenever a shot was unsatisfactory. He frequently assured me that, although he seldom fired at a female elephant, one bullet was sufficient to kill, and generally two bullets for a large bull of the same species.

Unlike Gordon Cumming, who was accustomed to fire at seventy and eighty yards, Oswell invariably strove to obtain the closest quarters with elephants, and all other game. To this system he owed his great success, as he could make certain of a mortal point. At the same time the personal risk was much increased, as the margin for escape was extremely limited when attacking dangerous game at so short a distance as ten or fifteen paces. When Oswell hunted in South Africa, the sound of a rifle had never disturbed the solitudes in districts which are now occupied by settlers. The wild animals have now yielded up their territory to domestic sheep and cattle; such are the rapid transitions within half a century! In those days the multitudes of living creatures at certain seasons and localities surpassed the bounds of imagination; they stretched in countless masses from point to point of the horizon, and devoured the pasturage like a devastating flight of locusts. Whether they have been destroyed, or whether they have migrated to far distant sanctuaries, it is impossible to determine; but it is certain that they have disappeared, and that the report of the rifle which announces the advance of civilisation has dispersed all those mighty hosts of animals which were the ornaments of nature, and the glory of the European hunter. The eyes of modern hunters can never see the wonders of the past. There may be good sport remaining in distant localities, but the scenes witnessed by Oswell in his youth can never be viewed again. Mr. W. F. Webb, of Newstead Abbey, is one of the few remaining who can remember Oswell when in Africa, as he was himself shooting during the close of his expedition. Mr. Webb can corroborate the accounts of the vast herds of antelopes which at that time occupied the plains, and the extraordinary numbers of rhinoceros which intruded themselves upon the explorer’s path, and challenged his right of way. In a comparatively short period the white rhinoceros has almost ceased to exist.

Where such extraordinary changes have taken place, it is deeply interesting to obtain such trustworthy testimony as that afforded by Mr. Oswell, who has described from personal experience all that, to us, resembles history. He was accepted at that time as the Nimrod of South Africa, ‘par excellence,’ and although his retiring nature tended to self-effacement, all those who knew him, either by name or personal acquaintance, regarded him as without a rival; and certainly without an enemy: the greatest hunter ever known in modern times, the truest friend, and the most thorough example of an English gentleman. We sorrowfully exclaim, ‘We shall never see his like again.’

INTRODUCTION

By W. Cotton Oswell

I have often been asked to write the stories of the illustrations given in the chapters on South Africa, but have hitherto declined, on the plea that the British public had had quite enough of Africa, and that all I could tell would be very old. As I now stand midway between seventy and eighty I trusted I might, in the ordinary course of nature, escape such an undertaking; but in the end of ’91 the best shot, sportsman and writer that ever made Africa his field—I refer to my good friend Sir Samuel Baker—urged me to put my experiences on paper; and Mr. Norton Longman at the same time promising that, if suitable, he would find them a place in the Badminton volume on ‘Big Game,’ I was over-persuaded, made the attempt, and here is the result.

The illustrations are taken from a set of drawings in my possession by the best artist of wild animal life I have ever known—Joseph Wolf. After describing the scene, I stood by him as he drew, occasionally offering a suggestion or venturing on two or three scrawling lines of my own, and the wonderful talent of the man produced pictures so like the reality in all essential points, that I marvel still at his power, and feel that I owe him most grateful thanks for a daily pleasure. Many of the scenes it would have been impossible to depict at the moment of their occurrence, so that even if the chief human actor had been a draughtsman he must have trusted to his memory. Happily I was able to give my impressions into the hands of a genius who let them run out at the end of his fingers. They are rather startling, I know, when looked through in the space of five minutes; but it must be remembered that they have to be spread over five years, and that these are the few accidents amongst numberless uneventful days. I was once asked to bring these sketches to a house where I was dining. During dinner the servants placed them round the drawing-room, and on coming upstairs I found two young men examining them intently. ‘What’s all this?’ one asked. ‘I don’t know,’ the other replied. ‘Oh, I see now,’ the first continued, ‘a second Baron Munchausen; don’t you think so?’ he inquired, appealing to me. We were strangers to each other, so I corroborated his bright and certainly pardonable solution; but they are true nevertheless. I have kept them down to the truth: indeed, two of them fall short of it. I am very well aware that there are two ways of telling a story, one with a clearly defined boundary, the other with a hazy one, over which if your reader or hearer pass but a foot’s length he is in the realms of myth. I think I had my full share of mishaps; but I was in the saddle from ten to twelve hours a day for close upon five seasons, and general immunity, perhaps, induced carelessness. I may say now, I suppose, that I was a good rider, and got quickly on terms with my game. I was, however, never a crack shot, and not very well armed according to present notions, though I still have the highest opinion of a Purdey of 10-bore, which burnt five or six drachms of fine powder, and at short distances drove its ball home. This gun did nearly all my work. I had besides a 12-bore Westley-Richards, a light rifle, and a heavy single-barrelled one carrying two-oz. belted balls. This last was a beast of a tool, and once—I never gave it a second chance—nearly cost me my life, by stinging, without seriously wounding, a bull elephant. The infuriated brute charged nine or ten times wickedly, and the number might have been doubled had I not at last got hold of the Purdey, when he fell to the first shot. We had no breech-loaders in those days, save the disconnecting one, and that would have been useless, for we had to load as we galloped through the thick bush, and the stock and barrel would soon have been wrenched asunder or so strained as to prevent their coming accurately into contact again.

The Purdey gun has a second history which gives it more value in my eyes than the good work it did for me. I lent it to Baker when he went up the Nile, and it had the honour, I believe, of being left with Lady Baker to be used, if required, during her husband’s enforced absences. Baker returned it to me with a note apologising for the homeliness of the ramrod—a thornstick which still rests in the ferrules—adding that having to defend themselves from a sudden attack, his man Richarn, being hard pressed whilst loading, had fired the original ramrod into a chief’s stomach, from which they had no opportunity of extracting it.

I am sorry now for all the fine old beasts I have killed; but I was young then, there was excitement in the work, I had large numbers of men to feed, and if these are not considered sound excuses for slaughter, the regret is lightened by the knowledge that every animal, save three elephants, was eaten by man, and so put to a good use. I have no notes, and though many scenes and adventures stand out sharply enough, the sequence of events and surroundings is not always very clear. If my short narrative seems to take too much the form of a rather bald account of personal adventure, I must apologise; and I may add that the nature and habits generally of the animals I met with are now so well known, and have over and over again been so well described by competent writers, that my relations with a few individuals of their families must be the burden of my song.

I spent five years in Africa. I was never ill for a single day—laid up occasionally after an accident, but that was all. I had the best of companions—Murray, Vardon, Livingstone—and capital servants, who stuck to me throughout. I never had occasion to raise a hand against a native, and my foot only once, when I found a long lazy fellow poking his paw into my sugar tin. If I remember right, I never lost anything by theft, and I have had tusks of elephants, shot eighty miles from the waggons, duly delivered. One chief, and one only, wanted to hector a little, but he soon gave it up. And with the rest of the potentates, and people generally, I was certainly a persona grata, for I filled their stomachs, and thus, as they assured me, in some mysterious way made their hearts white.

There is a fascination to me in the remembrance of the past in all its connections: the free life, the self-dependence, the boring into what was then a new country; the feeling as you lay under your caross that you were looking at the stars from a point on the earth whence no other European had ever seen them; the hope that every patch of bush, every little rise, was the only thing between you and some strange sight or scene—these are with me still; and were I not a married man with children and grandchildren, I believe I should head back into Africa again, and end my days in the open air. It is useless to tell me of the advantages of civilisation; civilised man runs wild much easier and sooner than the savage becomes tame. I think it desirable, however, that he should be sufficiently educated, before he doffs his clothes, to enjoy the change by comparison. Take the word of one who has tried both states: there are charms in the wild; the ever-increasing, never-satisfied needs of the tame my soul cannot away with.

But I am writing of close upon fifty years ago. Africa is nearly used up; she belongs no more to the Africans and the beasts; Boers, gold-seekers, diamond-miners and experimental farmers—all of them (from my point of view) mistakes—have changed the face of her. A man must be a first-rate sportsman now to keep himself and his family; houses stand where we once shot elephants, and the railway train will soon be whistling and screaming through all hunting-fields south of the Zambesi.

FIRST EXPEDITION TO AFRICA

Reduced from 12 st. 2 lb. to 7 st. 12 lb. by many attacks of Indian fever caught during a shooting excursion in the valley of the Bhavany River, I was sent to the Cape as a last chance by the Madras doctors; indeed, whilst lying in a semi-comatose state, I heard one of them declare that I ought to have been dead a year ago; so all thanks to South Africa, say I! I gained strength by the voyage, and, shortly after reaching Cape Town, hearing that a Mr. Murray, of Lintrose, near Cupar Angus, had come from Scotland for the purpose of making a shooting expedition to the interior, I determined to join him. The resolve was carried out early in the spring of 1844 (the beginning of the Cape winter); we started out from Graham’s Town to Colesberg, buying on the way horses, oxen, dogs, waggons, and stores, crossed the Orange River, and set our faces northwards. We were all bitten in those days by Captain—afterwards Sir Cornwallis-Harris, whose book, published about 1837, was the first to give any notion of the capabilities of South Africa for big game shooting, and, Harris excepted, ‘we were the first that ever burst into that “sunny” sea’-as sportsmen. Murray was an excellent kind-hearted gentleman, rather too old perhaps for an expedition of this kind, as he felt the alternations of the climate very much; and no wonder, for I have known the thermometer to register 92° in the shade at 2 p.m., and 30° at 8 p.m. I was younger, and though still weak from the effects of fever, the dry air of the uplands daily gave me vigour, and the absolute freedom of the life was delightful to me. Just at first I had to become accustomed to the many little annoyances of missing oxen, strayed horses, &c.; but when our waggons became our home, and our migratory state our life, all anxious care vanished. Things would be put right somehow; there was no use worrying ourselves; what had been yesterday would be to-morrow. What though the flats between the Orange and Molopo Rivers were full of sameness, they were also full of antelope, gnu, and quagga. These, with the bird and insect life, were all fresh, and made the world very bright around us. These upland flats have been so often described, that I will not bore the reader unnecessarily with an account of them, and besides, I am not writing of the country or its appearance, but have merely undertaken to try and give some idea of the game that once held possession of it; and, indeed, I doubt very much if I could convey any notion at the present time of what it was some fifty years ago, for all the glamour of the wildness and abundant life has long passed away.

On these plains the springbucks were met with in vast herds; for an hour’s march with the waggons—say two and a quarter miles—I once saw them to the left of the track, along a slightly rising ground, thicker than I ever saw sheep. I suppose they must have been trek bokken; that is, a collection of the herds over an extended area on the move for pasturage. The Hottentot waggon-drivers shot many of them, frequently killing two at a time, they were so closely packed. They were to be counted only by tens of thousands. Formerly, they used often to invade the northern outlying farms of the Boers, and destroy their crops; and though shot in waggon-loads, they would still hang about as long as there was a green blade of anything. They were nearly as bad as the locusts, a flight of which we saw, by the way, a few days after leaving Kuruman, near the ‘Chooi,’ or large natural salt-pan. We were at breakfast, when far down on the south-east horizon I noticed a wreath as of dark smoke rising rapidly, broadening as it advanced. In a very short time it enveloped us in the form of a locust storm; the whole earth and air were full of them; tens of myriads settled, and myriads of myriads rode on clanking in mimicry of armed cavalry, and crackling like a flame devouring the stubble. Look which way you would—nothing but locusts; they did not hide the sun, but they so obscured his rays that you could look straight at him. No simile seems so apt to me as that of a heavy snow-storm with large flakes, and this uninterruptedly for two or three hours. Though the land before them was not exactly as the Garden of Eden, verily behind them it was a desolate wilderness. As the cold of night came on, they collected on the bushes in enormous masses, eight or ten feet through, for warmth, weighing them completely to the ground, and they took flight again the next morning after the sun was well up. For two days my oxen never put their heads down; there was nothing found for them to eat. The swarms pass through waste and cultivated land alike, bringing dearth and destruction, and men’s hearts fail; but the adversary has arrayed his forces against them, and through the dense flights sweep the wedge-shaped squadrons of the springkhän vogel, or locust birds: dark and long of wing like swifts, with white patches beneath the pinion. As squadron after squadron wheels and passes over you, the husks of the locusts fall like hail. The birds are in very large numbers and do their work deftly; before long the air above you is clear, and though the evidence of the curse is upon the earth, and remains, the locusts themselves are soon got rid of, for everything on two legs and four eats them. The Bushmen follow the flights, feed on them, dry them, and keep them in store. One night, Livingstone and I lost our way, and seeing the light of a fire, made for it. Around it sat a family of Bushmen; so, heralding our approach from a safe distance, for fear of a flight of arrows, we introduced ourselves. They welcomed us, and offered us guides and a snack of dried locusts. I ate two or three, and they were not so nasty; something like what old shrimp-shells without the insides might be. These insects are bad enough in their winged, but worse in their early wingless, form, when, as the dreaded ‘foot-gangers’ of the Dutch farmer, they roll in living waves over his land, defy all attempts at extermination from their multitude, climb walls, quench lines of small fires placed in the hopes of turning them, cross rivers, millions jumping in, and millions getting over on the living raft. In both the winged and wingless state they are wonderfully described in chapter ii. of Joel.

On these choois, of which there are many, some of them twenty miles long and half as broad, the effect of mirage is more wonderful than I have ever seen it elsewhere. What seems an antelope grows into an elephant, and with the waving of the gauze returns to its actual form—a bush. By nearly all these salt-pans there is a spring which may perhaps have once played its part in their formation, or be the relic of the cause.

At one period of its history, Africa must have been a better watered country than it is now. In the driest tracts, in the waterless woods, you light unexpectedly on deep eroded channels, coming no whither and going nowhere. It gave me the impression that there had been a gradual uplifting of the surface, and a consequent sinking away of the old torrents and streams. The Bushmen and the elephants dig in these courses for water, which is now never seen on the surface, though the sides are sometimes worn away by its former action, twenty feet down. Over a large area the rainfall is exceedingly small, and in it the trees and grass have adapted themselves to their surrounding conditions. The former all send down long tap-roots through the upper soil to the close substratum, utilising them as the Bushman does the reed in his sucking-holes mentioned elsewhere; the latter grows with fleshy roots, and from the joints are thrown out delicate fibres ending in small tubers which, through the excessive drought and heat, act as reservoirs of moisture, thus sustaining vitality and enabling a bright green carpet to be spread two days after the fall of the rain. The animals, instinct led, follow the waterfall of the storm, and migrate to and fro in narrow zones. The birds do likewise; one beautiful hawk—happily called from his graceful movement Molela shoquan, ‘he flows as he turns’—is a most assiduous attendant in the green-room of nature. But the thunderstorms are very partial. For two days I have passed through country so drought-stricken that the bushes were leafless, the twigs dry, the grass dust, the ground iron, and all animal, bird, and even insect life completely absent. In those two days we felt and knew the abomination of desolation, and so did our poor beasts.

Nothing particular happened during our journey between the two rivers. We shot and trekked—one day much like another—and stopped a short time at Kuruman, the station of that grand old patriarch of missionaries, Mr. Moffat, where we received all the kindly hospitality, attention and advice possible from him and Mrs. Moffat—verily the two best friends travellers ever came across. I shall never forget their affectionate courtesy, their beautifully ordered household, and their earnest desire to help us on in every way. He advised us to go to Livingstone, who was then stationed at Mabotsé, 220 miles or so to the northward, and obtain from him guides and counsel for our further wanderings.

We were once nearly in trouble, however, after leaving Kuruman. We had crossed a little stream called, I think, the Meritsani, and one of our men, while cooking some tit-bit of an antelope Murray had shot far away from the camp, carelessly set the grass on fire. Luckily we saw it two miles off, and by clearing the ground, and burning the stubble round the waggons, we escaped. It was a wonderful sight to watch the wall of smoke and flame as it licked up the grass and bush and coiled itself in folds about the tree stems; birds, insects, and beasts fleeing before it. As it approached our clearing, the heat was intense, and we had some difficulty in restraining the frightened horses and oxen; but the roaring rolling flame came within thirty yards of us, and then as it touched the edge of our charmed circle died away into nothingness, its disappointment seeming to goad it onward to right and left.

The flat open country held till we reached the Molopo River. The sketch very correctly represents this little stream when we first saw it, and gives a good general idea of the 500 or 600 miles we had come. Seven different kinds of animals were within view, some, especially the quaggas and the buffaloes, in large herds—springbucks, hartebeests, gnus, &c., filling in the picture; together there could not have been fewer than 3,000. I shot a couple of buffaloes for the camp, and then inspanning passed ahead towards the ridge of low hills, fifteen miles beyond, and running east and west; they told of a coming change of scenery, and the next day we stood on the top of them—to the south 600 miles of rolling plain, very similar to that immediately below, lay between us and the southern sea; but to the north the scene was changed, the well-wooded and watered valley of the Ba-Katla, a broken country full of game, was stretched out before us—in those days a hunter’s paradise. For the first time tracks of rhinoceros, giraffe, and other unknown creatures were abundant, and we longed to cultivate the closest relations with them.

Without any just cause I thought myself a better sportsman than my companion, and determined to seek my game alone, in the hope that I might be the first to bag a rhinoceros. All day long I followed, with an attendant Hottentot, a trail of one of these animals, neglecting inferior game, but my experience in African woodcraft was small then, and I believe now that the spoor may have been a week old. At last, tired and disgusted with my want of success in not coming up with the object of my search, I shot an antelope, and returned rather earlier than usual to the waggons, which had been ordered to outspan under the range of hills. It was still daylight when I reached them, and there sat my friend Murray, quiet, cool and calm, very calm indeed. He greeted me with a nod and a smile, and asked me what I had killed? ‘A buck,’ I answered. He said nothing, but kept on smiling serenely. Presently I noticed a group of Kafirs sitting round their fire, and eating as only Kafirs can eat. ‘What are those brutes gorging themselves with?’ I asked my quiet friend. ‘Oh, only some of the rhinoceroses I shot this afternoon.’ I noted the plural, the iron entered into my soul, but I merely said: ‘Ah! indeed!’ in an easy nonchalant way I flattered myself, as if the shooting a rhinoceros was a matter of supreme indifference to me in those days, and walked to my own waggon.

Next morning at breakfast my friend offered to show me where the rhinoceroses lived. I was quite meek now, and ready to be introduced to this entirely imaginary locality. At that time we had not to go far to find, and had hardly left the camp a quarter of an hour, when the leading Kafir pointed out a great ugly beast rubbing itself against a tree eighty yards from us. I was off my pony in a second, determined to get to close quarters as soon as, and if possible sooner than, my companion. We both stalked to within twenty yards without being seen, and knelt down, I with the stump of a small tree before me; we fired together, and while the smoke still hung, I was aware of an angry and exceedingly plain-looking beast making straight at me through it. Luckily he had to come rather uphill to my stump, and his head was a little thrown back, when, within five feet of the muzzle of my gun, he fell, with a shot up his nostril, the powder blackening his already dingy face. This was a borili (or sour-tempered one); as a rule, the only really troublesome fellow of his family. I remember thinking my first introduction promised a stormy acquaintance, and hoping there might be gentler specimens, who rather liked being shot, or at all events did not resent it so violently. I got two or three times into serious trouble with these lumbering creatures; but the stories shall be told as they crop up. I may mention here, however, that success in rhinoceros shooting depends very greatly upon the sportsman’s kneeling or squatting. I lost many at first by firing from a standing position. The consequence was, that the ball only penetrated one lung, and with the other untouched the beast runs on for miles, unless, of course, the heart happen to be pierced; whereas, fired from a lower level, the ball passes through both lungs, and brings him up in 100 or 200 yards. A rhinoceros very seldom drops to the shot. Of all I killed, but two fell dead in their tracks. Exclusive of the Quebaaba (R. Oswellii), which was probably a variety of the mahoho, (R. Simus), and of which we killed three and saw five, there were three kinds—the Mahoho, the R. Africanus, and the R. Keitloa.[1] I say ‘were,’ for whilst I write I hear that the dear old mahoho is extinct. I am very sorry. He was never, I believe, found north of the Zambesi, but between that river and the Molopo, of which we have just spoken, he was formerly in great force. Poor old stupid fellow, too quiet as a rule, though, when thoroughly upset (like a good-natured man in a passion) reckless, he was just the very thing for young gunners to try their ’prentice hand on, and directly the Kafirs got muskets he was bound to go; though, considering the numbers there used to be, I hoped he would have lasted longer. He had no enemies to fear, save man and the hyæna, and the first without firearms would have made but little impression on him; for, although sometimes taken in the pitfalls, he was never, so far as I know, killed by spears. The hyæna, when hard pressed for food, would occasionally attack the male, who is formed like the boar, and eat into his bowels from behind; but it was a long business, and not by any means always successful. The ‘Cape wolf’ must have been very hard set before he attempted it.

I have seen these long-horned, square-nosed creatures in herds of six and eight, and when in need of a large supply of meat for a tribe, have shot six within a quarter of a mile, with single balls. They had a curious habit which helped the sportsman, and has no doubt led to their too rapid extinction. If you found four or five together, and wounded one mortally, he would run off with the others until he fell, and then the survivors would make a circular procession round him until the gun was again fired, and another wounded. Off they would go again, halting and repeating the performance when the second fell, and so on to the end. The female was an affectionate mother, never deserting her calf, but making it trot before her, until she was mortally wounded, when she seemed to lose her head and shot on in advance, and we then always knew she would not go fifty yards further. Though they were a very meditative inoffensive lot, there was a point at which they drew the line. I once saw Vardon pull a mahoho’s tail; this, however, was taking too great a liberty, and if I had not been near he might have suffered, but, as the heavy brute swung round to give chase, a ball at very close quarters stopped him. We have often been obliged to drive them from the bush before camping for the night. They apparently mistook the waggons for some huge new beasts, and were very troublesome; but this hallucination was not confined to the mahoho. A borili in a great passion away to the east of the Limpopo, charged Livingstone’s waggon, smashing his iron baking-pot. The borili is fidgety, apparently always in bad health, and constantly on the look out for a tree to scratch his mangy hide against. He has, too, an evil habit of hunting you like a bloodhound. He is the smallest of the three, with a short, snubby head, and a well-defined prehensile lip.

The keitloa, or more equal horned variety, is a mixture in form and temper between the mahoho and the borili; much larger than the latter, with differently shaped body, head, and horns, and less development of lip. The mahoho and quebaaba live on grass, the end of the latter’s horn from its downward curve being abraded by contact with the ground as he feeds. The borili eats bush alone, and the keitloa a mixed diet of grass and bush.

I could never understand the great power and strength of a rhinoceros’ horn. It is sessile on the bone of the snout, but not part of, or attached to it; apparently it is only kept in its place by the thickness of the skin, and yet, as I mention hereafter, a white rhinoceros threw me and my horse clear up into the air. Of course, the enormous muscles of the neck bore the brunt of the lift, but the horn did not suffer in any way. It is quite intelligible that the fact of it not being cemented to the bone would render it less liable to fracture at the base, and in itself it is tough enough, though consisting only of agglutinated hair; but I am only wondering that, attached as it is, it should possess the necessary rigidity for the work it does. It is occasionally used in the most determined way by rhinoceroses who have mutual differences to adjust. The Kafirs pare it down into hafts for their battle-axes. Of strips of the hide we made horse-whips, as the Egyptians do man-whips of that of the hippopotamus.

For his bulk the rhinoceros, especially the borili, is a quick mover in a hard trot and sometimes a gallop. The whole tribe are heavies, taking their pleasure, if any, very sadly. The hippopotamus, an even more ungainly beast, has the decency to remain most of his time in the water, but the ‘chukuru’ thinks it behoves him to bask in the sunlight and parade his ugliness. Standing motionless is the routine of his life, a scrub now and then against a tree his délassement—a very solid, stolid brute!

These creatures appear to me to be out of time, to have belonged to a former state of things, and to have been forgotten when the change was made. Often have I sat upon a ridge and looked at them as they moved solemnly and clumsily on the plain below, wondering how they still came to be in this world, and it has occurred to me how delightful it would have been to watch the pre-Adamite beasts in the same way, and learn their manners—which, I fear, were bad—as they came and went, no other man to interfere with your preserves, the world all to yourself and your beastly companions! How they would fight, and wallow, and roar, and how very cunning you would have to be to escape being eaten! I am afraid in my dreams two or three large-bored, hard-hitting guns have figured as desiderata; indeed, under such circumstances, I should not see the fun of doing king with a celt for a sceptre and half a dozen flint-headed arrows as a standing armament.

The rhinoceros would be even easier of approach than he is were it not for his attendant bird, a black slim-built fellow very like the king crow of India, who, in return I take it for his food, the parasitic insects on the chukuru, watches over his fat friend and warns him of the coming danger by springing up in the air and alighting smartly again with a peck on his back or head. This puts him on the alert, and he does his best, by sniffing and listening, to find out the point from which he is threatened, for his ears are quick and his scent excellent; but, as you are below wind of him, sound and smell travel badly, and his vision is by no means first rate. The natives by a figure transfer the connection between the bird and the beast to themselves, and when they wish to emphasise the great affection they bear you, or the great care they intend to take of you, address you as ‘my rhinoceros,’ an elliptical expression by which they mean to convey that they are your guardian birds. They are not always quite unfailing. Going out from Kolobeng after elephants I had heard of in the neighbourhood, I passed an old rain-doctor, whom I knew well, making rain with his pot on the fire, and his herbs and charms on the bubble. ‘Chukuru ami, where are you going?’ he asked. ‘To shoot elephants,’ I replied. ‘I was just making rain, but as you are my chukuru, I put it off till to-morrow.’ Is it necessary to say I was wet through in half an hour? A fine heavy thunderstorm was brewing whilst he was boiling. This rain-making is the Kafir’s pet superstition—the power is hereditary—believed in by the maker and his fellow-countrymen. Conditions difficult to keep are imposed, such as that the women are not to speak one word when at work in the fields: if the rain fails, why of course the women spoke!

We travelled very slowly towards Mabotsé, Livingstone’s station, and on our arrival there received every kindness and attention from him and Mrs. Livingstone, guides to the country to the north, with advice as to route, &c. Livingstone had not long got over his lion mishap—get over it altogether, indeed, he never did—the overlapping end of the broken humerus was visible enough when the body was brought home. The story of the accident was fresh with him and the Kafirs when we reached Mabotsé. A lion had killed an ox near the village, and the Ba-Katla turned out, as they always did when the lion deserted his game, and attacked their herds. Each man, as is usual in a hunt of this kind, carried two or three assegais and a plume of ostrich feathers on a pointed six-foot stick. The lion was tracked to his sleeping place, and the men made a ring round it, gradually closing the space between man and man as they advanced. Presently the quarry was roused and sat up, and then a spearman, taking a few steps in advance, threw his assegai. The thrower is generally charged, but the animal’s attention is immediately taken off by a second spearman and second assegai, and so on until, poor beast, it is killed. Accidents seldom occur in fairly open ground, as the men support one another very coolly and effectively. In rocky places the sport is dangerous; sometimes, however, even in favourable spots, the man is pressed closely by the beast, and he then as he runs plants the stick with the plume firmly in the ground and dodges away from it; the lion, half-blinded by rage, sees something before him, and springs at the ostrich feathers, giving the man a chance of escape. In Livingstone’s case they had lost the lion after wounding it, and were looking for it; the dear old Doctor caught sight of its tail switching backwards and forwards. Up and off went a gun that would hardly have killed a strong tomtit. Livingstone was spun over eight or ten feet, and the lion was standing over him. The brute took his arm in its mouth and put a heavy paw on the nape of his neck, from which he pushed it off, for, as he said, ‘It was so heavy, man, and I don’t like to be stamped on’—neither did he! The lion was then driven off and killed. Livingstone was so quiet and imperturbable that he would have made a capital sportsman, but he could neither shoot nor ride (except on oxback)—this was not his business. I am afraid he despised the rôle of a sportsman, and no doubt believed, as he has stated, that the Kafirs looked upon us as weaklings to be used for providing them food. Perhaps he was right; but I think he overlooked that we, with no knowledge of the language, would have found it very difficult to make our way, if we had only come to see the country, without shooting. He could talk to the Kafirs’ ears and hearts, we only to their stomachs; and I would fain believe that his grand work was occasionally made a little smoother by the guns.

An incident highly creditable to Kafir womanhood occurred just as we reached Mabotsé. The women, as is their custom, were working in the fields—for they hoe, and the men sew—and a young man, standing by the edge of the bush, was chatting with them. A lioness sprang on him and was carrying him off, when one of the women ran after her, and, catching her by the tail, was dragged for some little distance. Hampered with the man in her mouth and the woman behind her, she slackened her pace, whereupon her assailant straddled over her back and hit her across the nose and head with a heavy short-handled hoe till she dropped her prey and slunk into cover. This man was her husband! Would Mrs. Smith do as much for Mr. Smith? Could she do more?

We pushed on from Livingstone’s station and hunted through the country of the Ba-Katla, the people amongst whom he was living. It was then full of game, and put me in mind of the children’s pictures of Adam naming the beasts in the Garden of Eden—more animals than bushes. The first giraffes fell here, Murray again scoring, and killing No. 1. We seldom shot these beautiful-eyed, gentle-looking creatures—only a cow as a dainty now and then, for the flesh of the female is the most excellent eating, a kind of venisony beef. They were to be seen nearly every day in herds of from five to thirty. Shooting them on foot was a difficult matter, their great height giving them an extended view. I never stalked but two—a delicate head peering over a mimosa-tree nearly always detecting the coming danger before I could get within reasonable distance with my smooth-bore. There is no difficulty in riding them down (as we had, of course, sometimes to do for the men when other game was scarce) provided you are a light weight and a fair rider, for a horse requires more driving up to this animal than to any other. The towering height and the ungainly sawing motion appear to terrify him; and to these must, I think, be added the scent. Horses have very sensitive noses, and try to avoid giraffes, as in India they do camels. A good-couraged beast soon conquers his fears, but I have had regular fights with faint-hearted ones. Get as good a start as possible, press your game as much as you can for 300 or 400 yards—for press them you must, or you may ride after their tails all day—and you are alongside; a shot in the gallop with the gun across the pommel brings the poor thing to the ground, and you are ashamed of yourself if it has been done wantonly. Eland hunting, from horseback, may be classed with giraffe, as very tame after the novelty is over.

I would utter two words of warning with regard to hunting the giraffe. Do not ride close behind him, for in his panic he sometimes lashes out most vigorously—I have had his heels whiz very ominously within a few inches of my head; and my friend Vardon, in pistolling one that was standing wounded, only just missed what might have been serious injury from a vicious stamp of the forefoot—and be careful after you have fired to slacken speed at once, or pull your horse to the right, lest your victim fall on you.

I have measured bulls quite 18 feet—6 feet of leg, 6 feet of body, 6 feet of neck. For their peculiarity of shape, shared by other African animals, there must be a reason. Now we can understand that ‘a deer with a neck that was longer by half than the rest of his family—try not to laugh—by stretching and stretching became a giraffe,’ to the detriment of his hind-quarters. But what about the sasaybye, hartebeest, and elephant—why are they so low behind? The lion, too, is weak-quartered in comparison with his forehand, and even the hyæna has thought it necessary to follow the fashion. The animals of South Africa, indeed, are a queer lot—all countries have their specialities, but Africa is all speciality—distinct are the giraffes, the gnus, the hippos; adapted plus æquo are the elephants, rhinoceroses and antelopes.

Buffaloes were abundant, the bravest and most determined of all animals when wounded and at bay; courage is the instinct of the buffalo family. Look at the wild cousin in India, who will charge home upon a line of elephants, and even at his tame relations in the same country. In Collegal, an outlying talook of the district of Coimbatoor, in the Madras Presidency, I have seen the village buffaloes drive a full-grown tiger helter-skelter up the hills, pursuing him far beyond their feeding grounds. Again, I have known a misguided tiger spring into the midst of a herd penned up for the night; he was stamped and gored to death, and when taken out from amongst the half-maddened beasts in the morning he was a pulp. The Bubalus caffer is a stirring fellow when his blood is up; you may shoot a dozen on a flat or in open ground, taking your own distance for dismounting and shooting, and think them oxen; but wound one in thickish bush and follow him, and if alive he’ll let you know it! The Kafirs will hunt a blood spoor of elephant, lion, rhinoceros, or any other animal right ahead of you like hounds; but put them upon wounded buffalo tracks, they will follow you at a respectful distance; they know the ways of him and his character. Wounded in bush he runs straight on for some little distance, then turns back and takes a line close to and parallel with his up-tracks, lying down or concealing himself behind a patch of cover. With his eyes on the ground the sportsman is picking out the trail, when a hard grunting bellow to right or left makes him look up, and he had better beware and hold straight now if ever, for down comes the wounded bull, and nothing but death or a disabling shot will stop him. I have seen one with entirely paralysed hind-quarters attempt to carry out his rush to the bitter end by dragging himself along with his forefeet. His pluck is splendid; no single lion will face him, though, attacked by stealth or numbers, he occasionally falls a prey. Once I went out in one direction and Murray in another to shoot elands for fat to make candles—we carried wicks and tin moulds amongst our stores. I turned homewards early to throw off my load, and within a mile or two of the waggons put up six lions on a flat surrounded by bush; in riding after them for a shot I drove up a couple more, so I had a ‘flock’ of eight before me. Pressing them, the hindmost, a fine black-maned fellow, who seemed willing to sacrifice himself for his friends and relations, turned on me, thus giving the others time to continue their retreat. Twice I dismounted to shoot him, but before I could get the chance I wanted, I was obliged to remount, for the whole of his companions, seeing their rearguard cut off and in difficulties, bore down upon me. One was all very well, but I felt I was not the man for the eight; they were not very far from bush when I first saw them, and before I could get upon anything I thought equal terms they reached cover without a shot.

I found Murray already in camp. He had come upon an ostrich’s nest, and making his after-rider take off his trousers and tie up the bottoms, he had carefully packed the eggs in them, put them across a horse, and, with heart set on omelet, had returned to the cookery pots. Unfortunately, he had not broken an egg, but taken them in faith, and they all contained young birds, which the Kafirs were joyfully stirring round in our big baking-pot preparatory to a feast when I appeared on the scene. My readers may naturally say, ‘What has eland fat and ostrich eggs to do with the courage of buffaloes?’ Well, these are just the incidents of daily camp life, which have brought up another recollection illustrative of my point.

Death of Superior

That night, half a mile from the waggons, from dark to dawn a fight was going on. The air rang again and again with the short snapping bark of attacking lions and the grunting snorts of buffaloes on the defensive; and, as soon as it was day, we went to the field of battle. None of the combatants were to be seen, but the whole story was clearly told by the trampled ground. A herd of 40 or 50 buffaloes had evidently been attacked by a number of lions—the Kafirs said nine, from the spoor—but the ground was so torn and trampled I could not pretend to count. They had taken up a position in front of a very dense patch of thorns, on a curve, and shifted backwards and forwards as their flanks were threatened; the bulls and cows had come to the front, the calves had been placed in the rear, and they had held their own throughout the night without the loss of a single calf! The lions I had seen in the afternoon were probably the baffled marauders.

We had been unsuccessful up to this time in killing buffaloes handsomely. More than half those hit got away—chiefly, I think, from our not having as yet adopted the squatting position; but this may be a fad of mine, and our bad shooting have been the cause. Two days after leaving the camping ground I have just spoken of, whilst the waggons were moving slowly through the low bush, three bulls crossed the line of march. I was on my horse, Superior, and, with a shout to Murray that I intended to make sure of a bag this time, galloped after them, and singling out one, got alongside of him within five feet and fired. He pitched upon his head and lay perfectly still. Making sure he was dead, I would not give him the second barrel, and turned the horse to ride after the two others which were still in view; but, before I could get my animal into his stride, the wounded beast sprang up and struck him heavily. I felt the thud, but the horse did not fall, and cantered on for twenty yards, when the whisk of his tail dabbled my trousers with blood, and, on getting off, I found a hole thirty inches deep, and nearly wide enough to get into, in his flank, for the horn had been driven up to the base. The bull was too weak to follow up the attack, and died where he stood; the horse crawled on for a few yards, and then, seeing it was a hopeless case, I put a ball through his head.

This lesson early in shooting experiences made me cautious in buffalo-hunting throughout the whole of my time, though I have had a narrow escape or two. Coming homewards one afternoon, we stumbled into the middle of a herd asleep in the long grass. Our sudden appearance startled them from their dreams, a panic seized them, and away they galloped in the wildest confusion. One old patriarch had been taking his siesta apart from the rest, in a dense patch of bush to the right: the sound of the gun and the rush of his companions roused him, and with one barrel loaded, as I ran after his relations, I found myself face to face with him, within ten yards. He was evidently bent on mischief. We stared at one another for a second. I fired at his broad chest; it was the best I could do, for his nose was up, and the points of his shoulders were not exposed. He plunged at me instantly. I fortunately caught a projecting bough of the mimosa-tree under which I was standing, and, drawing my knees up to my chin, he passed below me. I have heard of people avoiding a charge by quickly stepping on one side, but the ground must have been in their favour, and they must have been very cool, and only resorted to this instinctively, I think, as a last resource. A buffalo, it is true, drops his head very low, but only just before he closes, and he can strike desperately right and left from the straight line, so you ought to secure four or five feet side room. I have never been obliged to try this lateral movement, and fear I should have made a mess of it, though I know it is possible; for I once travelled down the west coast of South America with a bull-fighting man and woman, and they explained to me how, when the ‘toro’ charged, they stepped aside and stuck the banderillos into his neck; but they had no bush or smoke to contend with. I have often, however, had to dodge animals round a tree, and once escaped from a borili by catching a bough, as in this instance.

On our first journey to Lake ’Ngami, when within a hundred miles, the oxen wearied, so we selected twelve of the freshest and started with my waggon only, and some of the men, leaving the rest to encamp themselves and await our return. During our absence the drivers had to supply the party with meat. One of them wounded a buffalo, which immediately charged. The man, dropping his musket, climbed a tree just in time. For four hours the buffalo watched that tree, walking round and lying down under it. How Piet got to terra firma again I do not remember. Probably the animal grew tired of waiting, though they are generally very patient, and willing to bide their time for retaliation. The following short story illustrates the vengeful nature of the beast; it is told, I think, in Moffat’s ‘Missionary Travels,’ but I have not the book by me, and cannot vouch for the exact words: A native, sitting by the water at night, wounded a buffalo, but not mortally. It made for the shooter, who ran and lay down under a projecting rock. Unable to get its horns to bear, but not to be baulked, with its long, rough tongue it licked off the flesh of the exposed part of the man’s thigh down to the bone, and then left its victim, who died early in the morning.

The smell of blood seems to madden these beasts; they will turn on a wounded and bleeding companion and gore him most savagely. As I write recollections come back of scenes that had left no vivid pictures in my mind, because nothing untoward happened; but why not, and how not, now one thinks of it, is wonderful. Stalking an antelope, or I know not what, I found myself in an immense herd of buffaloes. The bush was full of them, I was surrounded, and had nothing to do but stand still. They dashed about me like rooks after the wireworms in a newly ploughed field. I had the sensation of drawing myself in very tightly about the waistband. Till they thinned out into a tail I could not begin to shoot, but there were such numbers that even then I knocked over six at exceedingly close quarters. The danger was, being run over or butted down in the headlong stampede. The same thing has happened to me, and, I dare say, to many all-round shots, with elephants. How they avoided or missed you—for they didn’t seem to try to avoid—you can’t tell. You come out of it without a scratch, and therefore, as a rule, think no more of it.

If I were to write our daily life and shooting, it would be weary reading. In a few chapters of this kind, all I can do is to take my readers into some of my scrapes, and let them fill in the blanks; but perhaps, once for all, I may put the abundance of the game in those days in some way intelligibly before them, if I say that in most parts, with horses, one gun could easily have kept 800 men—600 we tried—fattened, and supplied with a store sufficient to last for months. Fortunately, in consequence of the excessive dryness of the climate, meat, cut into long thin strips and hung over the bushes to dry in the sun, will keep quite good for a long time. It needs soaking before cooking, and loses much of its flavour, but it holds body and soul together.

Leaving the valley and rocky hills of the Ba-Katla, we moved slowly onwards towards the Ba-Wangketsi; before reaching them, an event occurred which coloured my whole African life, and will colour my life as long as I live. It is no story of big game, and perhaps ought not to find a place in these pages; but it is so bound up with all my shooting, all my pleasure in Africa, that I would ask to be forgiven for telling it. I should feel a traitor to the memory of a dead friend if I did not.

We were trekking through some low sand-hills covered with scrub, when three lions crossed about fifty yards ahead of the oxen. Snatching up a gun, I jumped from the waggon, calling upon someone to follow me with a heavy rifle which was always kept loaded as a reserve battery. I pressed so closely on the leisurely retreating trio that the largest stopped short. I squatted, intending to take his shoulder as he turned, looked round for my second gun, and heard the bearer, who was close to me, whisper in Dutch, ‘You can get nearer by the ant-hill.’ The move lost me the lion, as he broke away after his companions; and then for the first time I took notice of the cool, tall, handsome lad who had offered me advice, and recognised in him at once the stuff to make a henchman of. From that day forth he was my right-hand man in the field, and never failed me.

John Thomas was an Africander, born at the Cape, of parents probably slaves; but as a grand specimen of manhood, good nature, faithfulness, and cheerful endurance, I never met his equal, white or black. Plucky to a fault, he was the least quarrelsome of men, the life and light of our camp fires, and the pet of the Kafirs, who seemed at once to understand his quiet unpretending nature, and always made their requests to me through ‘bono Johnny.’ To tell his good deeds through a five years’ wandering would very often be to show up my own faults; let it be enough to say that he was a perfect servant to a very imperfect master, who, now that his friend is dead, feels that he did not value him half enough, though he never loved man better. His worth, to those who know the troubles and difficulties of African travelling, may be outlined by the following little story.

When Livingstone and I made our journey in search of Lake ’Ngami, we held out to our followers that if we were successful we would not attempt to press on further. They were, as a rule, a timid folk, dreading the unknown, too ready to listen to any tale of danger and difficulty that might be in the world beyond, and always eager to turn colony-wards. After some hard work we reached the lake, and success bred in us the wish to do more; but we were bound to stand to our agreement. At last the desire of penetrating deeper into the land became so strong that I suggested calling a meeting of the servants and trying what our eloquence might effect. After putting before them that we fully recognised our promise of not constraining them to go with us any further, I told them that the Doctor and I had made up our minds to give them one of the waggons with sufficient stores, supplies and ammunition for their homeward journey, while we ourselves had decided to push on ahead. I further explained to them that they would have no difficulty in reaching the colony, as they knew the waters, and had the wheel-tracks. I paused for a minute, and then added, that though we could not ask them to accompany us, yet that if any one of them was willing to do so, we should be very glad. I rather enlarged upon our ignorance of the country in advance, for we did not wish to influence them unduly to join us. For a few moments there was silence, and blankness of face; then out stepped John, and speaking in Dutch, as he always did when his feelings were touched, though he at other times spoke English perfectly, said: ‘What you eat I can eat, where you sleep I can sleep, where you go I will go; I will come with you.’ The effect was instantaneous. ‘We will all go!’ was the cry. Do you think after that it was much matter to us whether our brother was black or white?

Time wore on. I was obliged to return to England. John accompanied me to the Cape. I told him, in part, how I valued his services, and asked him if I could in any way repay my debt of gratitude. I had taught him to read, in the bush, but that was the only good I had ever done him. His answer came, after some hesitation. He had heard so much of England that he should like, of all things, to go with me there. Two days later we were on board ship together. He, as usual, was everything to everybody—helping the steward, attending the sick ladies, nursing the babies; the idol of the sailors, to whom he told stories of bush life, the adored of the nurses. John, with all his virtues, was a flirt—the admirer and admired of all womankind. On arriving in England, I left him in London and went down to my brother’s. He hesitated about my henchman, thinking a real live black man would hardly suit the household of a country clergyman. But his coachman fell sick. Could John drive? I should think so. He was the best eight-in-hander in Cape Town. Down he came, and in half an hour he was perfectly established in the family. My brother declared he never had such a coachman, and was very kind to him, timidly at first. The cook taught him writing; the lady’s-maid went on with his reading. I shall not forget meeting him with the two women, one on either arm, chatting with them in the most accomplished style. His stay in England was limited to six months, as we had agreed, and he went back to the Cape with a friend of mine, who wrote most highly of him.

Two years passed away; I was a wanderer again; and at the beginning of the Crimean War found myself carrying secret-service money to Colonel, now Field Marshal, Sir Lintorn Simmons, political agent at Shumla. On my return to the coast I fell in with a cavalry regiment and the 60th Rifles encamped near Devna, a few miles from Varna. A sergeant of the latter regiment saluted as I passed, and asked for news from the front. Silistria was then besieged. I turned myself half round to the right on my saddle to talk with him, and presently felt a hand placed very gently, lovingly, on my left foot. John stood by my stirrup, his face a picture of affectionate triumph at having caught me again. He had taken service with an officer of the 60th. We threw ourselves down under a bush and renewed old memories. The Major, near whose tent we were, called John, and, finding from him who I was, most courteously entreated me, telling me how beloved John was by the regiment, and how well, through him, they knew my name. I had letters to deliver at Constantinople, and went on. John, I believe, sickened, and was invalided to England; but for two or three years I heard no more of him, for I was away in South America and elsewhere. Shortly after my return home a letter came to me, asking if I could recommend a black man named ‘John Thomas’ as a butler! He had referred the writer to me. I was obliged to say I knew nothing of his capabilities in this line, but added that, as a staunch ally in a fight with an elephant and an absolutely trustworthy man in all the relations of life (save that of a butler, in which I had not tried him), I could most highly recommend him. My friend engaged him, and had an excellent servant, for such was John’s power of adapting himself to circumstances that nothing ever came amiss to him. But the dark day was coming on; and, in the midst of his affectionate service, beloved from the head of the house to the youngest child, trusted and never found wanting, always ready and always willing, this fine, noble fellow died. I heard of his sickness too late to see him alive on earth, but I trust that master and man may hereafter meet as brothers in Heaven.

We had been shooting in this Ba-Wangketsi country for a fortnight, and the work had been very hard. One morning after breakfast, my companion, who was busy cleaning the head of a koodoo, said he would have a day of rest, and finish what he was about. His laziness was catching. I ordered my horses to be unsaddled, and was idling about the camp when our head man told me there was no food for the twelve or fourteen dogs, our night watchmen; so I took up my gun, which was only loaded in one barrel, and strolled out on the chance of a shot; but as, kill or miss, I intended to return immediately, I did not carry any spare ammunition. A reedy pond lay close in advance of the waggons in a little opening; beyond this, as on every other side, stretched a sea of bush and mimosa-trees. Two hundred yards from the outspan I came upon a clump of quagga and wounded one, which though mortally hit struggled on before falling. I followed, and marking the place where it fell, set my face as I thought towards the waggons, meaning to send out men for the flesh. No doubt of the direction crossed my mind—the pool was certainly not more that 400 yards in a straight line, and I thought I could walk down upon it without any trouble; so taking no notice of my out tracks, which had bent slightly in following the quagga, I started. It was now about 10 a.m.; little did I think that 5 p.m. would still find me seeking three vans nearly as large as Pickford’s, and half an acre of water.

In my first cast I cannot say whether I got wide or stopped short of the mark I was making for, and it was not until I had wandered about carelessly hither and thither for half an hour, feeling sure that it was only the one particular bush in front of me which hid the waggons, that I very unwillingly owned to myself that I was drifting without bearings in this bushy sea. The sun was nearly overhead, and gave but slight help as to direction, and the constant turning to avoid thick patches of thorns rendered it nearly impossible, in the absence of any guiding point, to hold a fixed course through this maze of sameness.

I tried walking in circles in the hopes of cutting the wheel tracks, but though on a previous occasion this plan had succeeded, it now failed. As with empty gun I plodded on, occasional small herds of rooyebuck and blue wildebeest, evidently very much at home, swept and capered by me, and, stopping and looking at me with wondering eyes, increased my feeling of loneliness. I had no doubts of regaining my party next day at latest, and cared but little for passing a night in the jungle; but, bewildered and baffled, I envied the instinct of the so-called brutes, which, careless of their steps, were nevertheless quite sure of their ways. Twilight near the tropics is very short. Just before the sun set, therefore, I followed a game track which I knew would lead to water, as it was still early in the season, and the rain supply had not yet dried up in the hollows. At dusk I reached a pool similar to the one I had quitted in the morning. After a good draught I began collecting firewood, but for once it was very scarce, and the night closed in so rapidly, that a bare hour’s supply was all my store. Partly to save fuel, and partly in the hope that as the night crept on signals would be made from the waggons, I climbed a tree which stood by the side of the water, and had not been long perched before I heard, though so far off that I could hardly catch the sound, the smothered boom of guns. Alarmed at my absence my companions suspected the cause, and were inviting my return: but it required a very pressing invitation indeed to induce a man to walk through two miles of an African wood in those days on a dark night.

This particular spot, too, was more infested with lions than any other, save one, I was ever in; and, though harmless and cowardly enough as a rule in the day, they were not likely to prove very acceptable followers at night. But I had been walking all day under a tropical sun, my clothing was wet with perspiration, and it now froze hard—for freeze it can in Southern Africa—and I was bitterly cold. I determined to come down and light my fire. I knew it would last but a short time, but thought I would make the best of it, and thaw myself before attempting to return. I got to the lowest bough of my tree, and had placed my hand beside my feet before jumping off, when from the bush immediately under me a deep note, and the sound of a heavy body slipping through the thorny scrub, told me that a lion was passing. Whether the creaking of the tree had roused his attention and caused him to speak so opportunely I don’t know, but without the warning, in another half-second I should have alighted on his back. I very quickly put two or three yards more between the soles of my feet and the ground. Presently, from the upper end of the pool came the moaning pant of a questing lion; it was immediately answered from the lower end—their majesties were on the look-out for supper, and had divided the approaches to the water between them. It was much too dark to see anything, but from the sounds they seemed to walk in beats, occasionally telling one another of their whereabouts by a low pant; of my presence I think they were not aware.

This went on for an hour or more, and I got colder and colder; my beard and moustache were stiff with frost. I could not much longer endure the cramped position in my scraggy tree, and I felt I must get down and light a fire, when, suddenly up came the blessed moon, and right under her the sound of three or four muskets fired together. With the help of her light and partial direction in case my companions got tired of firing, I was not going to stay up a tree to be frozen. Waiting, therefore, until she was about ‘one tree high,’ and until the lions were far asunder, on their separate beats, as well as I could make out from the sound, I came down, and capping—it was all I could do; for, as I said, I had started without powder and ball—my empty gun, which was standing against the tree, I passed at the double round the end of the water and dived into the bush on the opposite side. I have no doubt my desire was to get on as quickly as possible, but reasons for a cautious advance soon made themselves heard on all sides. An African forest was then alive at night. I only thought of the lions, and especially of the two I had left, or perhaps not left, at the water; but every little nocturnal animal that stirred kept me on the stretch—the less noise the more danger. The movement of a mouse might well be mistaken for the stealthy tread of the king of the cats. Among the trees the moon gave but scanty light, and nearly every minute I had to stop and listen as some unseen animals passed near me. Sometimes I could recognise them by their cry, but mostly it was ‘a running that could not be seen of skipping beasts’ that troubled me. The only animal I really saw that night was a rhinoceros that, with head and tail up and in a terrible fuss, crossed a few yards before me. A sound in front, and I strained my eyes into the shadowy darkness in advance; the rustling of a leaf told of life to the right or left; and the snapping of a twig of possible death in the rear. But I struggled on for an hour, I should think, when, stooping to clear a low bough, four or five muskets fired together within fifty yards told me I was at home again. I hope I was thankful then; I know I am now. Two of my Hottentot servants and a batch of Kafirs had come some distance into the bush in the hope of meeting me, and escorted me to the fire in triumph. As I held my still only half-thawed hands over it, the baulked roar of a disappointed lion rang through the camp. He had not been heard before that night. ‘He has missed you, Tlaga,[2] by a little this time,’ said my black friends. ‘Let him go back to his game.’ They were right, for in the morning we found his spoor on mine for a long way back. Whether he had come with me from the water or I had picked up a follower in the bush I never knew. My constantly stopping and listening probably saved me, for a lion seldom makes up his mind very suddenly to attack a man unless hard pressed by hunger. He likes to know all about it first, and my turning, and slow, jerky progress had probably roused his suspicions.

Two nights before this we had met with a sad misfortune. The oxen were ‘kraaled’—surrounded, that is, by a hedge of thorn-trees, and bushes strong enough to keep them in and lions out, we hoped—a mode of defence we always adopted if there was wood enough close to the outspan, or we intended staying any length of time in the same place; though occasionally, when we only halted for the night and were distant from water, and therefore likely to be free from lions, the oxen were instead made fast to the leathern rope, or ‘trek tow,’ by which they draw the waggon, each pair—there were five to each waggon—to their own yoke in the order they worked in the team, so that they were ready and in right position for inspanning in the morning. We were lying on this occasion by a large Wangketsi village, and the cattle had been kraaled rather to prevent them getting mixed with those of the Wangketsi, as they were taken out to graze at sunrise, than from any apprehension of an attack. The three waggons were drawn up as usual on one side of the enclosure, and the Kafirs were by their fires on the other. I was asleep, but was roused by shouts, the discharge of a musket, and the sudden rush of our pack of dogs. I found a lion had sprung over a weak place in the thorn fence on to the back of an ox, and, scared by the shouting, had jumped back again the same way. According to tradition I know the ox ought to have been in his mouth, but it wasn’t. A lion will drag an ox by the nape of its neck anywhere, but he can’t carry it, much less jump a 6-foot hedge with it in his jaws. It was quite dark, but by the gleam of the fires the men, aroused by the panic of the oxen, caught sight of him, and one of the Hottentot drivers had taken a flying shot. The dogs pressed hard upon him; directly he gained the cover he stood to bay. I suppose the poor things got hampered in the bush, for presently two crawled up to us mangled and dying. The hubbub went on for some minutes, and then the lion, frightened probably by the firing and yelling—we could give no other aid to our allies—broke bay, and ten dogs returned exclusive of the two that had come in to die; two were still missing—one of them a brindled bull terrier, which we all knew must one day come to grief, for he was a most reckless, determined brute, game to go in to anything. A few days before, feeling offended at a puff adder—the worst of the Cape snakes—hissing at him, he had seized it, and notwithstanding the snake striking him on the head with its fangs, had stuck to and killed it. His head swelled to an immense size, but he pulled through and recovered. With day we went to the place where the scrimmage of the night before had occurred, and there lay ‘Tod,’ as the Hottentots had named him, with the other absentee, both dead. ‘Tod’ had apparently run straight into the lion’s mouth, for the marks of the teeth were visible enough over his back and loins. He was a rash fellow, but he died an honourable death. The loss of dogs was a very serious one, for it was through their fidelity and watchfulness we were able to sleep in comparative ease and safety. At the first sound or smell of danger they went to the fore, and walked barking round and round with the lions, just keeping clear of their spring or sudden rush, showing them they were detected and that the camp was not all asleep. In the times I am writing of I don’t think it would have been possible, save with a large number of armed watchers and fires, to have kept your oxen in anything like safety without dogs. You went to sleep in peace as soon as the dog-watch was set and the fires made up for the night. Firewood was abundant after passing the Molopo. A store of huge logs was collected directly the waggons halted, and the blaze was kept up throughout the night, the fires being shaken together and replenished by anyone who chanced to wake; and as their own safety depended on it, the men were zealous in this part of their duty.

By this time we had shot most of the kinds of game to be found away from the rivers, in large numbers—Harris’s black buck potoquan (Aigoceros niger), and the beautiful hill zebra (Equus montanus) excepted. The former I only saw once during my five years in Africa, and never got a chance at, and the latter I would not have shot if I could—he is such a pretty, tiny, thoroughbred-looking thing, the size of a small Shetland pony, and the most playful little fellow imaginable, springing about the rocky hill-tops with the surefootedness of an ibex. We had not yet fallen in with elephants or even seen their tracks. Three years after the time of which I am writing I killed them frequently to the south, but now they were away to pastures new for the time, and we decided on going on north to the Ba-Mungwato country in the hope of finding them.

A night attack—Lupapi

On our way we halted at a small spring at the bottom of a slight depression. It looked as if the water had once been much larger, and might have occupied the best part of the area. There was a trickling overflow, which, after running a few yards, tumbled into a hole and disappeared; hence its name ‘Lupapi,’ or the ‘Mouse.’ This was the very worst place for lions I ever knew; not so much from their number as their insolent audacity. I stopped here on three separate occasions, and each time was molested more than sufficiently. On this, the first, we had made, luckily, a very strong kraal. The fires would not burn brightly, as there was a misty rain falling. At 10 p.m. or half-past we had only just turned in when we were attacked in force by two lions and a lioness. Our vedettes, the dogs, were driven in, and the enemy charged down upon the cattle enclosure. The noise, of course, woke us all, and dogs, Kafirs, Hottentots, Murray and myself had our work fully cut out; our assailants kept just outside the firelight, making savage rushes at the dogs, but never giving us the chance of a shot. I stood for a long time in very scant attire (someone brought me a jacket and trousers later on), my first entrance to the scene being anything but noble, for on running from the waggon to the front my foot caught in a creeper, and I fell heavily. The Kafirs behaved admirably, never yielding an inch, though the lions were very determined. After half an hour or so we nursed the fires into brighter glow, and increased the circle of light around us, and things grew rather calmer. We could hear every breath and angry purr, though as we were looking into the dark we could see nothing. For some time I made a Kafir stand beside me and throw brands into the darkness, hoping by a gleam to get sufficient indication of the whereabouts of our foes for a shot—but in vain. I fired frequently as near as I could guess on the spot where the purring seemed to come from, and could hear the angry beast make a dash at the pinging ball. But I struck nothing save the ground. However, we had checked the onset, and now had only to keep on the alert. Just before the day broke the siege was raised, and I was on horseback to look out a better camping-ground for the next night. As I cleared the low jungle which lay around us, a lioness broke away from the edge of it and took across an opening beyond. She was eighty yards from me, rather too long a shot for the old Purdey; but there was cover ahead from which I could not cut her off, and I was savage enough at her unwished-for attentions during the night, for she was, no doubt, one of the three, and oh! how glad I was when I heard the ball thud, and saw her stride short. I mounted and rode her to a standstill in a couple of hundred yards, when she squatted in front of a bush. I got within twenty or twenty-five yards of her, intending to dismount, but found I had fired all my loose balls away during the night, and that the one in the barrel was all I had to rely on. I have a weakness for a second bullet, and backing my pony a little further off I told my after-rider to go to the waggon and bring me a fresh supply. He was only absent a few minutes, I keeping watch on the lioness meanwhile. On his return I loaded the empty barrel, and, getting off for a steady shot, found to my dismay that, although I could see her well enough whilst sitting on my horse, the long grass hid her entirely when on my feet. I could not remount, for the after-rider had removed the horse, and it is not probable the lioness would have allowed me to do so without interference. For a moment I was in a fix, but about ten yards to my left I saw a dead mimosa-tree with a fork in it five feet from the ground. It appeared my only chance, though a risky one; and I wonder to this day that the beast did not charge when she saw the scrub moving as I passed through it. She did not, however, and I gained my fork and could now see her quite plainly, and she me likewise, for she never took her eyes off for one second. Her head was full front. I aimed between her eyes, but a twig must have turned the ball, for I was firing from a rest, and it only bored a clean hole through her ear. She struck it angrily with her paw, and then faced me again. The second shot was more successful, and she dropped dead. I had hit her the first time very far aft, but I think she must have been more crippled than I had supposed, or she would never have allowed me to move about so clumsily without attempting a diversion.

The second attack, a year afterwards, was not so prolonged, but the lions pressed the men so hard that they had to take refuge between the fires and the hedge of the kraal, and the beasts twice crossed the line of firelight in pursuit. The third imbroglio at this water was more serious, but the initiative this time was with me. John, my after-rider, woke me very early one morning to tell me a lioness and her cub were drinking at the spring, from which we were lying only 200 yards distant. Ordering him to saddle two horses—they had not yet been loosed from the waggon-wheels to which we always made them fast in pairs—I slipped on my clothes and, jumping on the back of one of them, galloped towards the spring, followed by John, half a dozen Kafirs, and the dogs, hoping to cut off mother and child from the thick bush behind them. But they beat me; and the dogs, taking the scent, followed them. The Kafirs had come with me, partly to see the fun and partly, in case of my shooting the lioness, to catch the cub, which, when it is quite young, they manage to do by chasing and dodging it, and throwing their short skin carosses over it. They then roll it up like a baby in swaddling clothes, with only its head out at one end and its tail at the other; round the bundle they wind a leathern riem or strap, and pass the snarling though now harmless little beast from one to another, saying pretty things of its father and mother, aunts and uncles, &c.

‘Post equitem sedet “fulva” cura’—The lioness does the scansion

The dogs very soon brought the lioness to bay, and I got within thirty yards, but from the thickness of the bush could neither see them nor her. I shifted my position once or twice in the hope of making out what was going on, standing up in my stirrups looking for an opening, that I might dismount and get a shot. Suddenly the barking of the dogs and snapping snarl of the lioness ceased, and I thought she had broken bay and gone on, but in a second I heard a roar on the horse’s right quarter, in a different direction from that into which I had been peering, and, looking round, saw her with her mouth open, clearing a rather high patch of bush twenty yards from me. There was no time to get off the horse, and no possibility of a shot from his back, for the charge was on his right flank, and you cannot shoot to the right. I did the only thing that I could—jammed the spurs in and tried to make a gallop of it; but my follower was too close, and before I could get up full speed I heard her strike the ground heavily twice in her bound, and with the third she sat up behind me. She jumped short, however, and failed to get hold with her mouth, but drove her front claws well into the horse’s quarters, and a hind foot underneath him, and so clung, but only for a moment; for the poor beast, maddened by fright and pain, and unable to stand up under the extra weight, became unmanageable, threw his head up, and swerved under the projecting bough of a tree which, striking me on the chest, swept me from the saddle against the lioness, and we rolled to the ground together. A sharp rap on the head, from my having fallen on a stump, stunned me for a minute or two, and I woke to life to find John kneeling alongside of me, asking me if I was dead, which was a needless question, seeing I was at the time sitting up rubbing my eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’I said, but at the same instant I heard the dogs again baying fifty yards off, and recollection came back. Rising to my feet, I staggered like a drunken man, rather than walked towards the sound, and propped myself up against a tree, for I was still weak and dazed; indistinctly I could occasionally see both dogs and lioness. Presently, something broke through the thinner part of the bush, and I fired and wounded one of the dogs. And the lioness, tired by the protracted worrying, and startled perhaps by the sound of the gun, bounded off and escaped without a shot. I have been often asked by those who have seen the sketch, ‘Oh, but why did you not turn round and shoot her from the saddle?’ And all the answer I could or can give is, ‘It’s easy to say but difficult to do,’ and that in a second we were on the ground together. The men told Livingstone that the dogs came out so close upon the lioness that she, rather flustered at being swept from the horse’s back, turned to fight with them, and took no notice of me. We caught the horse four miles off, and I sewed up and cured his wounds, but he was never fit for anything again, bolting dangerously at a stump or other dark object. A hard spin after a straight-horned gemsbok killed him.

It was here at Lupapi that I first saw the wild dogs hunting. I had gone towards the water on the chance of a shot, late one afternoon, and as I got into the little flat in which the spring lay, an antelope broke through the bush on my right, panic-stricken and blown. Thirty yards behind it came the wild dogs; before it had gained the middle of the open space they ran into it, and though I was within 100 yards, they had torn it nearly to pieces when I got up. They then retired a short distance, sitting down and watching menacingly whilst I cut away part of the hind quarters, and the moment I turned my back swooped down on their prey, dismembering and putting it out of sight in an incredibly short time. They are ugly-looking brutes, more like jackals than dogs, with great endurance in running, and great grip of jaw. Three or four head the pack, holding the scent. As they tire, three or four others take their places, the pack running loosely after the leaders.

We reached the kraals of the Ba-Mungwato, but met with a surly reception. The chief wished to play the part of the great potentate, and declined seeing us, sending messengers for presents and specifying what they were to be. His envoys, however, returned empty-handed, with a reply that we were not in the habit of giving without expectation of some return; that if we could not see him we would go to the next tribe; that we had come to hunt elephants in his country, and to feed his people; but that if he did not wish us to do so, or would not help us in our hunting, neither would we send him any gift in anticipation, or on the chance of changing his mind, adding that we should mention his politeness to other white men, who would henceforth avoid him. So the day passed. Two or three lounging fellows of the tribe told my men yarns of Secomi’s power and of the retaliation he took upon his enemies, mentioning inter alia that we were encamped, having been led to it by his orders, upon the very spot where last year he had disposed of a party of Matabili who had come on an embassage. Hottentots are open to swaggering stories, but in this instance their credulity was confirmed when shortly before sunset they rambled out in advance of the waggons, and found that we were in a cul de sac, the hills closing in round us 300 yards off and offering no passage through them, and, horror of horrors! on the ground lay a number of human skulls.

They came back in great fear, and told us the result of their explorations. We were not much disturbed, but I thought it wise to take precautions against surprise, and served out ammunition to the men, bidding them sleep with their muskets handy and take their cue from us. The night, however, passed quietly. About 7 in the morning news was brought me that the great man was approaching with a number of his warriors. I ordered the horses to be made fast to the waggon-wheels and the oxen to be tied, ready for inspanning, to the trek tow, and then allotted to each man his tree, intimating very clearly that, in the case of a disturbance, they were to follow, not set, an example, and that if anyone fired a shot before I did, I would shoot him.

Secomi came up with his spearmen, and sat down opposite me, fifteen feet from our fire, where we were taking our morning coffee. Livingstone had sent a very fine old Bechuana fighter with us as a kind of head man, a most dignified superior fellow, by name Syami (Anglicè, I believe, ‘stand firm’), who had won great renown in many a fight, and once, when wounded badly and left for dead, on coming to had broken off the shafts of the assegais, and crawled three miles on hands and knees to a friendly village, with the irons still in him. This man we put up as our champion, and for an hour and a half did he argue in our interests, speaking with all the untrammelled fluency of uncivilised man. We understood but little of what he said, and that only by signs, not words; but he was evidently very eloquent. The chief at first would hardly listen to him, but was by degrees brought to treat upon the matter, making suggestions as to what presents would be likely to assuage his wrath; but we firmly refused to budge an inch from our original lines, until he should give us a guide to the next tribe, for after his conduct we told him we were determined not to shoot in his country. There was no active sign of hostility. The position Secomi had placed himself in with respect to the muzzle of my gun, which lay across my knees, exercised perhaps a calming influence; but he would not help us in any way, and steadily refused guides. We were wearied of the long discussion, and I called to the Hottentots to inspan the oxen and loose the horses; this operation was watched intently, without remark, by the chief and his followers. I then gave orders to turn the waggons, for I had the night before ascertained the direction of the Bakaa Hills. As the oxen slowly brought the heavy carts round and faced the other way, I gave the order to trek, and the faces of the Ba-Mungwato were a sight to see. Throughout the preliminary operations they had watched us eagerly, believing us ignorant of the trap into which we had been inveigled, and hoping that we should go further on into it. I do not think they would even then have attacked us, but their feelings would have been relieved by our disappointment and the success of their arrangements. The bird had, however, seen the snare and escaped out of the hand of the fowler. They stood stupefied and crestfallen, and the waggons moved on without a word or sign of opposition. I brought up the rear with the loose oxen and horses. We had gained 300 or 400 yards from the camping ground, which was still in sight, when I heard the sound of running behind me, and turning saw a man coming on at the top of his speed after us. He threw up his hands to show he was carrying no arms, and I grounded my gun and waited for him. ‘What is it?’ ‘I am sent by the chief to take you wherever you like to go!’ ‘Lead on to the Bakaa then!’ and thus ended our first and only difficulty with the natives.

On our arrival we found this people in a pitiable state; the crops had failed, and they were starving. The chief welcomed us warmly, asked what we had come for, and on receiving answer to hunt elephants, besought us to take his people and feed them, putting his country and his services at our disposal. On condition that his people during their stay with me were to be my people, I accepted 600 men, women, and children in the most terrible state of starvation. No white man, emaciated as these poor fellows were, could have walked ten yards—the two bones in the lower arm and leg were distinctly visible, and you could see them working in the joints and attachments; in truth, nearly the whole party were bones covered with skin, and poor skin too, for from poverty of blood you could hardly have found a sound patch large enough to lay a crown piece on. The chief introduced three of the head men to me, and bade me hold them responsible for the rest, and I did—and never had the very slightest trouble.

We started for the hunting grounds next morning, and were among the elephants in a day or two. There have been discussions as to who is king among the beasts, and to this day the lion is generally given the title. But look down that narrow game-track. A lion is coming up it from the water. As he turns the curve in the winding path he sees that a rhinoceros or buffalo is coming down to drink. He slinks into the bush, lies very low, gives them the road, lets them pass well by, and then resumes his interrupted way. If this is the king, he is exceedingly courteous to his subjects—one might even think just a little in awe of some of them. King of the cats in Africa he may be, and is; but king of the beasts he is not.

Come with me to a desert pool some clear moonlight night when the shadows are deep and sharply cut, and the moon herself, in the dry, cloudless air, looks like a ball. All is nearly as bright as day, only the light is silver, not gold. Sit down on that rock and watch the thirsty animals as they drink—buffalo, rhinoceros, antelope, quagga, and occasionally, if the water is large, lions too. But what has frightened the antelope and quagga that they throw their heads up for a second and fade away into the shadows? The other beasts, too, are listening, and now leave the sides of the pond. Nothing but the inevitable, irrepressible jackal, that gamin amongst wild things, remains in view. As yet your dull human ears have caught no sound, but very soon the heavy tread, and low, rumbling note of an oncoming herd of elephants reaches you. They are at the water. The jackals have sat down with their tails straight out behind them, but not another creature is to be seen. The king drinks. Not a sound is heard. He squirts the water over his back, makes the whole pool muddy, and retires solemnly, leaving his subjects, who now gather round, to make the best of what he has fouled. This is the king in the opinion of the beasts. You may think him a nervous monarch, subject to panic, and I do not know that you are not right; but he has weight in the animal world, you may be assured.

This African elephant is an uncomely, ragged fellow, with his bad facial angle, huge ears, long forelegs, sliced off quarters, and generally untidy appearance; but he carries fine tusks, and often gives you a lot of trouble. I have ridden nearly twenty miles on his spoor before coming up with him, and liked him all the better for it. He is wanting in ready wit, but is a wise, thoughtful being in his ponderous way, and a great hand at combination. He wishes to feed on the top of a tree, finds it too strong for him alone, calls on a friend or two, and, with an all-together swing, they bring it to the ground. When at bay, he has a fancy for pushing down a tree on your head and charging through the branches. His friend tumbles into a pitfall—by the way, males very seldom do, for, fearing no other animal, they carry their trunks down; the sensitiveness of that organ warns them of the danger, and they will walk securely amongst a nest of these traps and neatly uncover them, throwing the reeds and grass into the air with scorn. The cows, however, are frequently taken, for, anxious about their calves—which are often attacked by lions—they carry their trunks in the air, feeling for a chance scent of the enemy. The Kafirs sometimes lie in wait by the water near to which the pits are dug, and after the elephants or other game have drunk, raise a shout, and in the hurry of the retreat the living graves reap their harvest.

These pitfalls are 10 feet long by about 9 deep and 4 wide at the top, narrowing as they deepen, so that a large beast gets jammed in them; they are made larger specially for elephants, and are most skilfully covered with reeds, grass, and a few handfuls of sand. I have ridden into them horse and all, and I have walked into them; in the first instance, I shook my feet out of the stirrups in time to prevent my legs being crushed, and managed to scramble out from the horse’s back. In the second, walking on the high bank of the Zouga River, I was rating one of my drivers in the river-bed below for punishing his oxen, when I suddenly felt the ground give way beneath me, and amidst a shower of dust and broken reeds thought I could catch the sound of laughter from the waggon—let us hope I was mistaken. Luckily this one had no stake at the bottom, as many have. But we have left our elephant in the trap too long; let us return to him. His friends at first run off panic-stricken, but often come back affected by his piteous calls for help; and, swinging their heavy forefeet, strike the sandy soil with the front part, cutting away earth from the end or side of the pitfall, quicker than a navvy could with a spade, and at last successfully freeing their companion, who stamps all the débris of the broken-down sides beneath his feet, by helping him with their trunks up the rough kind of incline they have made. This occurred one night within 300 yards of our waggons; we, of course, did not see the operations, but we heard them being carried on, and the elephants talking to one another, and these were the inferences the Kafirs drew next morning from the foot-marks and appearances, and they assured me the case was not uncommon. If the wariness of these heavy animals among pitfalls is wonderful, not less to be admired is the way in which they manage to clamber up trackless heights, and come down by impossible-looking paths. A wall of rock 300 feet high is before me; immediately along the edge runs a shelf five or six feet wide, in places so precipitous that you could only slip down it, and even that at considerable risk, but over it, in Indian file, come eighteen or twenty elephants making their way to the jungle below. As they reach the sharp inclines they sit down, and thrusting their hind legs straight out under them, as far forward as they can, they ‘go it,’ as Albert Smith used to say of the Alpine tourist, and everyone comes safely to the bottom. They take readily to deep water, displacing so much that only the ridge of the back, and upper part of the head down to the eyes, show above the surface; they carry the trunk up and swim strongly. I have known them come to the opposite side of a river, and finding the bank too steep to climb, at once begin pounding it with their forefeet until they had established a firm resting-place for one gigantic rammer, and then starting from their fresh point of departure, go on making steps till the flight was complete—this was in India.

In elephant country we were always obliged to be very careful, for a single shot at night will sometimes drive a herd far away. Unlike the rhinoceros and buffalo, elephants seldom drink twice at the same place in a river. This is partly due to caution, though perhaps it may chiefly depend on their soon eating up a district, and having to seek new feeding grounds. With this object they frequently travel great distances—fifty miles or more—in a night. This will not appear so remarkable if it is considered that the bulls often stand fifteen miles from the water, and walk to and fro in the hot nights without missing, though during the colder season they are contented with alternate nights. In India, where vegetation is rank and the forests dense, elephants hold on to the same locale.

The ears of the African elephant are enormous—six feet in length, and broad in proportion, though I never measured the breadth. The lower end just touches the point for the side shot. I was once hunting these animals in the Ba-Quaina country, and had killed three, when a tiny dark wreath on the horizon warned us of a coming thunderstorm. A South African sky is for nine months quite free of cloud; for 300 out of the 365 days of the year the sun rises as glowing copper, and sets as flaming gold, without a framing of any sort. A happy thought struck me: I ordered the Kafirs to cut off an ear from one of the dead elephants, and, lying curled up beneath it, I escaped a wet jacket, though the rain came down in waterspouts, and I stood six feet. The scientists of the future may find occupation for some time to come in developing the cause of abnormal ears, sloping backs, thorns at the ends of lions’ tails, and a number of other little peculiarities in beasts, birds, insects and fishes; but they ought not to delay, for many types are already on the wane.

The elephant’s head is wonderfully constructed. If it were great masses of bone and muscle, the ligaments of the neck would need to be of extraordinary power to support it; but between the larger bones, and in all admissible parts of the skull, the spaces are filled in with a cellular, bony structure, fulfilling both requirements of strength and lightness.

I believe some people suppose the Carthaginians tamed and used the African elephant; they could hardly have had Mahouts Indian fashion, for there is no marked depression in the nape of the neck for a seat, and the hemming of the ears,[3] when erected, would have half-smothered them. My knowledge does not allow me to raise any argument on this point; but might not the same market have been open to the dwellers at Carthage as was afterwards to Mithridates, who, I suppose, drew his supply from India, where they have been broken and made to do man’s work from time immemorial? Vide friezes, carvings, pictures, stories, myths innumerable—the last running back into obscurity—the elephant holding in them the position of the ‘gin’ in the Arab tales. Half the world has at one time been the habitat of this great pachyderm or its congeners. Siberia, with its fossil ivory mines, and Europe everywhere, are its tombs. Destroyed or driven south by some climatic change, India and Africa are its present homes; but in Africa the place thereof shall soon know it no more, and to our great-great-grandchildren the old ‘tlou’ will be as the mammoth is to us.

The elephant’s age is a disputed point; but, as no one has quite decided, let me put it down at 200 years, upon these two grounds: 1st, that most animals live four or five times as long as they take to attain maturity, and an elephant is certainly not a ‘man’ till he is fifty; 2ndly, that I had charge for the Government of a large take of elephants caught in a ‘coopum’ in India. They were sometimes, while being broken, very troublesome, and if they got beyond the control of the men a tame elephant, ‘Lachmé,’ was called in to ‘whip’ them. Lachmé had been a pagoda elephant sixty years; we had the record of her capture as a full-grown female. That makes her upwards of a hundred, and she was then, in 1847, quite in her prime, without a sign of old age, and I dare say is very much the same still. The young calves, too, are the smallest beasts for the size they afterwards attain, and must take a long while growing. Such tinies are they that I have had them run under my pony, and touched their little pinky bodies with my foot—poor morsels! I never could shoot the female with any satisfaction, and I think I never did at all but twice; males were plentiful enough.

Men differ as to the height of the African elephant. I have seen thousands, and shot the largest one I ever saw. I measured him, and he was 12 ft. 2 in. I have heard of one 17 feet high, but I did not see him, and it is long ago, so perhaps he was the last of the giants! A tusk was exhibited in the African Exhibition in Regent Street, in 1890, by Sir Edmund Loder. It weighed 180 lbs. odd, and was by far the heaviest single tusk known, I should suppose; but I have been shown a pair, 303 lbs. and 9 feet in length. My largest trophy was rather under 8 feet long, and the pair weighed between 230 and 240 lbs. They belonged to a bull I killed on the Zouga; he was the smallest old one I shot in Africa-not more than 9 feet high. I went out with John one bitter morning to provide food for the camp, and, having dropped a white rhinoceros, made for the waggons to get hot coffee and breakfast. On the way we came across an elephant, its head entirely hidden by a thick bush. Thinking, from its size, it was a cow, I was passing it unnoticed, when John, with the desire, I suppose, of adding to his collection of tails, begged me to shoot it. I fired, and down went the bush, as, with a shrill trumpet, the elephant trampled through it, disclosing nearly six feet of naked ivory, over the curve; so long were the tusks, and so diminutive their owner, that the points barely cleared the ground. A second ball finished him.

The drier the country the smaller the elephants. On the Limpopo the average height of the bulls was 11 feet, on the Zouga and through the Kalahari 10 feet. The ivory of the smaller kind was larger and, I am told, closer in grain. These tusks, which are deposited by a gum, are very slow of growth; and the molar teeth, to ensure a supply for a long life, have always a young tooth growing at the back of the alveolar process which pushes out the old ones as they become worn.

Most of my elephants were killed from horseback with the shoulder-shot; the cover is rarely thick enough to allow you to get within reach on foot. Besides, on foot you can seldom dispose of more than two at a time; whereas from horseback, under favourable conditions, you may double or even treble that number. Sometimes you must crawl in, and then, of course, you take the head shot if you can get it; but you ought to be within fifteen yards, on a line parallel with your quarry, just a trifle in advance, and then a ball in the lower depression, or temple, will, nineteen times out of twenty, be instantly fatal. I see Sir S. Baker does not believe in the front shot for Africans; but, though as a rule I agree with him entirely, I certainly have killed them by this. Their heads slope so much backwards, however, that it often fails. In tolerable ground there is but little difficulty; but in thick bush there is always some danger, more especially if you are particular in choosing your tusks; and in riding the bull you select out of the herd there is a certain amount of knack—you settle to him and then press him individually, disregarding the rest of the herd for the time. He shoots ahead of his companions, or turns round on you and charges; in either case you have gained your object—separation. If he charges, put the horse to the gallop and let him follow you, the farther the better. Watch as he slacks off, keeping about twenty yards ahead, and pull up sharp when he comes to a stand. He is too blown to charge again, and when he turns to go after his mates he must give you his side; one or two shots properly placed at short range are enough, and you are away again after the flying herd. The oftener you attack the easier the victory, for the heavy beasts get tired, and in consequence are much less difficult to kill.

The little elephant is an amusing imitator of the ways of his elders. I have come upon cow herds with a number of very small calves. As the mothers move off, disturbed and trumpeting, the little fellows fancy it their business to follow suit. Up goes each tiny trunk with a penny trumpet and a fussy waving to and fro. When frightened they run under their mothers, and peer out in the most old-fashioned way; and if you have been unfortunate enough to kill the parent, they will often follow your horse—poor little beggars!

The mothers, I think, as a rule, do not show so much affection for their young as might be expected. They are too nervous and easily affected to remain mistresses of themselves, and, so far as I have experience, forget their offspring in troubled times. You have occasionally striking instances to the contrary, but they are the exceptions. In a large herd of females I once shot a young bull, believing him a good tusked cow; as he dropped, a gaunt old lady, presumably his mamma, fell out from the herd, and charged me at once. I was on horseback and galloped away from her, as she had shabby stumpy tusks, and though I was that day shooting for the pot, there were plenty of others to choose from. She turned back to the dead elephant, which lay in the opening through which I had to pass to get at the others, and stood guard over it, charging in the most determined way every time I attempted to get by—which I had to do at last by allowing her to follow me and then doubling on her. This scene I remember more clearly than I otherwise perhaps should because of an extraordinary sight. When I caught the elephants again they were slinging down a hillside. Dismounting, I killed three of them, two pitching on their heads and rolling over like rabbits.

We shot through the country of the Bakaa for about seven weeks, north and south of the rocky hills on which they lived, and I was here first introduced to that giant tree, the baobab. I was following elephant spoor on foot, with three or four men, through thick thorns, when I found that they had led me off the tracks; and on looking up for a reason why, quite close to me stood what at first I took to be the body of an elephant, I threw my gun into my left hand to be in readiness, to the amusement of my followers, who, knowing I had never as yet fallen in with the baobab (Adansonia digitata), had led me a little aside to grin at my astonishment. These quaint, enormous trees seem to have belonged, like many of the animals of Africa, to a bygone world, and, finding the present doesn’t suit them, they are taking their leave. A few of the old ones still remain, but I never saw a young one. The largest I measured was 74 feet girth at four feet from the ground, and the smallest 45 feet, but I perhaps overlooked smaller specimens.

We had very good sport, unbroken by accident or anything remarkable. Our starvelings had fattened day by day, and were now shining and very merry and happy in their new skins. Uncivilised man does not take long to pick up; he only wants food, and plenty of it. Shall I be believed if I say that Kafirs will eat, if you give it them, from 12 lbs. to 15 lbs. of solid meat in the day? It appears, I know, an impossible feat, but I can vouch for it and partly explain it, too; for in a short journey with Livingstone, between the Chobé and Zambesi rivers, two or three years after this, we had no sort of meal with us, and were consequently obliged to live on meat alone. And I certainly thought the dear old Doctor was very greedy, for he would eat 4 lbs. for his breakfast and the same or more for his dinner. On telling him my opinion of his performance, he retaliated, ‘Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve been thinking just the same of you!’ The fact is that a very large quantity of meat is required if nothing else is eaten. When I got back to the waggons I tried giving two or three of the men a handful of beans with their rations, and found they could not possibly eat more than 3 lbs. of flesh, the smaller mixed diet meeting all the requirements of the system.

We had harried the country of the Bakaas a good deal, and decided on seeking a new field along the banks of the Limpopo, where we heard the game—elephants especially—were in great abundance; so, setting our heads about E. by S., we journeyed onwards, and, travelling slowly, came to it on the third or fourth day—the last twenty-four hours without water for the cattle.

This day ought to be marked with a very large though dull-coloured stone in my shooting annals. Murray made a long détour to the N.E., intending to strike the river lower down and follow it up to the encampment. I kept within easy distance of the waggons, as I was anxious to see the cattle watered and well cared for. I shot two large bull elephants and a rhinoceros, and one of the drivers killed a giraffe and a quagga. I think we must have been near the river, for men were left behind to cut them up and dry the flesh, and I do not remember any other water within reach. It was about 3 p.m. when we drew up on the bank, and I was sitting down and enjoying the pleasant sight of the thirsty beasts taking their fill, when I heard three shots in quick succession three-quarters of a mile down stream. It could only be Murray, for there were no guns in the country in those days except our own and those of the Boers far away to the eastward, and my Kafirs would have told me soon enough had any stray party of these been about. Again came shot after shot, and thinking Murray was either in trouble or had fallen in with a herd of buffalo, the spoor of which was very plentiful, I caught one of the ponies, and putting the bit in his mouth, kicked him along as fast as he could go in his waterlogged condition.

Immediately opposite the sound of the guns the bush was so thick I could not get through with the horse; so, tying him to a tree on the outside, I crawled in, and came upon a kind of backwater from the main river, very deep, 150 yards long by fifty wide, with high banks, especially the one opposite me, on which sat the dear old laird blazing away right merrily—his after-rider helping him keep up the cannonade by loading one of the guns. ‘What is it?’ I shouted. ‘Look at those beasts,’ he replied—bang. ‘There again’—bang. ‘Look!’ he cried. The pool was alive with monstrous heads, and though this was the first time I had seen the hippopotamus in the flesh—fat, perhaps, I ought to say—for we had then no friendly hippo in the Zoo—there was no mistaking him.

I opened fire at once from my side at heads which showed for a second above water and then disappeared below, again to reappear; and Murray kept pounding away from his. This went on for a quarter of an hour, and nothing came of it; though the hippos were hit every time, not one of them seemed to die—there was, apparently, the same amount of snorting, puffing, and blowing—but no results of the thirty or forty shots that had been fired, and yet the animals were within twenty or twenty-five yards of us. ‘Have you killed any, old fellow?’ I shouted, and the answer came back to me, ‘No!’ At the same moment a big bull made straight for the part of the bank on which I was standing. Letting him get his forelegs clear of the water, I fired within three feet of his head, blowing him back, as it seemed, into the stream. ‘Well, I’ll swear I hit him!’I roared to Murray. ‘Oh, I’ve hit all I’ve fired at,’ was his reply. The evening was closing in, and just before we started for the waggons one hippopotamus floated up dead on Murray’s side. We looked at one another, and did not say much of our shooting. Next morning, however, on the surface of the creek lay fourteen huge bodies—a hippopotamus sinks to the bottom when killed, and only floats when the gas distends the stomach; at least, that was our reading of the riddle. It is the poorest of sport, and I never shot another except for food. The young are very good eating, the flesh resembling the most delicate pork.

We knew nothing about the tusks when we shot this first batch, and so lost some valuable ivory. Large hippopotamus’ teeth were then worth 20s. a lb., when elephant ivory would bring only 5s. 6d., the former, I believe, being used for the finest sort of inlaying and artificial teeth.[4]

The hippopotamus and crocodile live together in the same rivers, and keep the peace, though on what pact I know not, for the young of the former would be sucking-pig to the latter; I suppose there is a mutual agreement of bear and forbear. The hippopotamus looks more like a retired publican than a fighter, but whether he can bite or not, ask the canoes. The little calves stand on the broad backs of their mothers as the school moves from one feeding ground to another, and this may be a precautionary measure, for I fear ‘Brer’ Crocodile is not a very honourable fellow. I may mention as a curious fact that once or twice I found his armoured skeleton fifteen feet up in the trees by the river’s bank. The Kafirs assured me that it was thrown there by an elephant who had come down to drink, and on whose trunk the crocodile had fastened, whereupon the elephant in his fright and fury had kneaded him to death and then, with a toss from his tusks, treed him. I could see, and can suggest, no better explanation of his position—high above even flood mark.

Next morning our now plump Bakaa came as a deputation, assured us we had made their hearts quite white, and requested leave to return to their kraals. It was granted, of course, and a few days later, after drying their strips of meat and making it up into large faggots, having requisitioned as carriers a number of Ba-Lala—a kind of poor Kafirs who hang on the outskirts of the more powerful tribes like pariahs or mean whites, and whose position I could never exactly make out—they set out for their villages, each man, woman, and child staggering under as much meat as he or she could possibly stand up under. This one day’s shooting of elephants and hippos had given them over 60,000 lbs. They had large stores beside, and every few days had sent back men with loads to their chief throughout the whole time of their being with me. They all went to their homes. Out of the 600 not one was missing, sick or feeble.

We shot down the river for a month or five weeks. On one of the last days, Murray and I rode out together. We usually took our separate beats, and this is, as a rule, by far the best plan, for men get jealous shooting against one another—the camp fires dull; in this way, too, you learn more of the country through which you are travelling. We had pottered about, shot a giraffe, and some smaller game, when accidentally we lighted upon a herd of elephants. Now you very seldom come across elephants by chance; you have nearly always to follow them for miles from the water; but here they were, and eight fine bulls too—nothing very large in tusks, but all good. Though startled, they stood and fronted us. We each took one of the flankers, firing at the point of the shoulder. With a flourish of trumpets the whole eight charged in a crescent—it was a grand sight—we turned and galloped right and left, the bulls pressing after Murray, and in their course driving up an old mahoho, who puffed and snorted, and putting on full steam managed at last to get clear, in great alarm. We only bagged a couple; in after years with more knowledge I should have got at least four single-handed.

The season was drawing on, and we set our heads southward and westward towards Mabotsé, and, shaking the dear old Doctor and Mrs. Livingstone by the hand, went down to the Colony, I to refit for next year, Murray to return to England. I should have managed very well with the stores I had, but from December to April you cannot keep your horses alive—the horse sickness kills every one. This mysterious illness, though an epidemic at the Cape, is endemic through the old hunting grounds. It is said to be peripneumonia, and to arise from the rank vegetation springing up after the first rains; but I think some other explanation of its cause than this must be found, as the horses suffered just the same once when I was crossing the Bakalahari desert rather too early in the season, for I lost six in nine days. Bleeding to exhaustion seems the only remedy, and one or two I certainly managed to pull through by opening the veins at both sides of their necks at once, and letting the blood run till I could push them down with my hand. Had it not been for this we should never have taken the trouble of the long journey to and fro, but have remained quiet for the hot months, and then resumed the campaign when the weather became cooler.

CHAPTER III
SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA

By W. Cotton Oswell

Murray returned to England. I threw off my ivory at the nearest frontier town, and laying in such fresh supplies as were needed, and buying half a dozen horses to fill up the gaps, was by the middle of April on my way to the Mariqué River, a small tributary of the Limpopo, intending to shoot down it to its junction, and then follow the main stream as far as I might be able. The game was very numerous, and John was already well on with his frieze of elephant tails round the inside of my waggon. He always cut off the ‘tips’ from the elephants I shot, as a kind of tally; and now that we did much of the tracking alone, he was besieged on his return to camp by the Kafirs, to find out how many tails he had, and whether the late owners were fat! They ran heel the next morning and left men to cut, dry, and despatch the flesh to their respective kraals; a large number, and all the head men, remaining with me.

One morning, before I started, a Kafir came in with a letter fastened in a cleft-stick, from ‘a white man shooting on the Limpopo, three days up stream from the junction of the Mariqué’; it was from a Major Frank Vardon, of the 25th Madras N.I., who, hearing I was within a short distance, proposed to join parties and shoot together. I had been one whole season and part of another at the work, and I thought that a new comer of whom I knew nothing might not be the most desirable of companions; he would very likely wish to stop when I wished to go on, and vice versa, and I sent an answer in this spirit; but, ‘thanks be praised,’ I repented of my churlishness in an hour after the departure of the messenger, and wrote a second letter, begging Major Vardon to ignore the first, pardon my selfishness, and join me as soon as possible; and to the end of my life I shall rejoice that I did so, for in three days the finest fellow and best comrade a man ever had made his appearance.

I had been fortunate in finding elephants early, had shot three fine bulls, and in consequence of having had a very long ride the day before, after a herd we never came up with (we started at 8 a.m. one morning and only reached the waggons again next day at 7 a.m.), I returned to camp about 3 p.m., and introduced myself to my new companion, who had just arrived. I will not attempt to describe him—let every man picture for himself the most perfect fellow traveller he can imagine, and that’s Frank; brightest, bravest-hearted of men, with the most unselfish of dispositions, totally ignorant of jealousy, the most trustworthy of mates; a better sportsman, and better shot than myself at all kinds of game save elephants, and only a little behindhand in that, because he was a heavy weight and poorly armed with a single-barrelled rifle; yet he was always rejoicing in my success, and making light of his own disappointments—and this man I had all but missed!

Sometimes we would take a day together after elephant or buffalo, and occasionally we met by accident, our beats cutting one another, and the sound of the guns showing our whereabouts. Once having come together in this way, we saw the finest struggle of brute force I ever witnessed. We were making tracks back to the camp, walking our horses slowly along the bank of the river, when Frank got off to shoot a waterbuck (Aigoceros ellipsiprymnus). A shout followed the report of his rifle. Dismounting, for the bush was thick, I soon joined him. In stalking the waterbuck he had come across buffalo, and had wounded one, which with two others was still in view. I started in pursuit and soon outran Vardon, for he was stout, one Kafir holding with me. Presently I was abreast of his animal, which was leaning, hard hit, against a tree. I gave it a widish berth, not wishing to finish Frank’s work, and pressed on after the others; but, just as I passed, it made a plunge forward, and began to run again; at the same instant the bush was streaked with yellow, and calling out, ‘Come along, there’s a lion!’ I put on a spurt to get first shot, carrying the gun at the trail, for one had to stoop often under the branches of the thorns. After going a hundred yards, I could distinctly hear the sharp snort of the buffalo, and muffled growl of its assailant, and knew that the latter had got hold. I still ran on, looking out for a sight of the combatants, when suddenly the man who had kept up with me put his hand on my wrist, and, pulling rather harder than he intended, stooping forwards and running as I was, down I came over-balanced. ‘What is it?’ I asked angrily. ‘Look!’ he answered. Within twenty-five yards a magnificent fight was going on. Two other male lions had joined the one I had first seen, and run blood-spoor till they had overtaken and stopped the buffalo. They were now all standing rampant on him, teeth and claws both at work, the gallant old bull doing his utmost to hold his own against odds. He tried to gore them, but they hugged his side, putting their bodies parallel with his, and so escaping the thrust; he swung the lion on his right completely off his legs, as you swing a child by his arms. It was only by glimpses that you saw anything, for it was an enfolding cloud of dust, out of which came every now and again the black hide of the bull and the fulvous coats of the lions. Every muscle of the attackers and attacked was on the stretch. You felt rather than saw the terrible strain. Had the buffalo been unwounded, even with the odds of three to one against him, he would have left his mark. It did not last much more than a minute—perhaps not even that—and then the grand, old ‘Naàri’ came to the ground, killed by the ball, not by the lions.

ODDS—3 TO 1

The one of these which had attacked on the right came round to his fellows, and they all three stood with their forepaws on the carcase, and roared and growled their pæan of victory. Frank had come up; we were too near to speak, but I motioned him to take the lion on the left, while I covered the middle one. We fired together; his fell dead with a broken back, filling its mouth with bush as it rolled over: my shot was rather a slanting one, went in through the back ribs, and out somewhere forward; at all events, it was not fatal on the spot, for the lion sprang over the buffalo without stopping to inquire where it came from; the third never moved, but kept on shaking the dead bull till I had loaded again and killed him. I wish we could have picked up No. 2, but the evening was closing in too rapidly to allow us to track him any great distance, and we did not therefore bring him to bag, as we must under other circumstances have done, for he was wounded to his death. It was my clumsy first shot that was in fault, and Frank’s want of a second barrel. When a lion has fast hold of his prey with his mouth, his eyes are nearly closed, and you may get quite close to him, the folds of the skin of the face being driven up by the constriction of the muscles of the jaws against the lower lids: the Kafirs all recognise this fact.[5] Vardon was a very deliberate shot, and used to take me to task for snapping too much. But our weapons were different, his a finely-sighted rifle, mine a very open-sighted smooth-bore.

He gave me quite a jobation one day, in the presence of a living lion, not ten yards from us, when he delivered his text. It happened on this wise. The waggons were halted for the night, on the bank of a deep ‘nullah.’ There were no elephants to alarm in the neighbourhood, so I strolled out on the chance of a shot. It was late in the afternoon, 4 p.m., and I could hear Vardon talking to his men two hundred yards off, as he came back to camp. Whether roused by his voice, or by sight of me I don’t know, but a lion broke from the bottom of the nullah, and scrambled up the opposite bank. It was a longish shot, and I think I missed. In two or three minutes, exactly at the spot the lion had gained the bank, Vardon and his party appeared; I ran through the hollow, and telling him what had just happened, we put the Kafirs on the trail and followed. We had not gone a hundred yards before one of the men made signs to us to stop, and through the very patch of bush in which we were standing the beast came heading down again to the thickly-wooded ravine. He really was not more than eight feet from us, but a dry bush was between. I dropped on my knee, and when he was slightly in advance fired. It is always better to let a passing lion get a trifle ahead of you; there is more chance of a kill, less of a charge. The ball struck well behind the shoulder and went right through him. He bounded on, dabbling the bush on either side with blood, and then dear old Frank began to blow me up for firing too quickly. In this instance, I really had not done so, but he had not got his rifle off, not having a clean sight, or he was desirous that the game should get clear of the partially covering scrub. We never picked up this lion, for a wind arose in the night and blurred the spoor, and he had not died in the long grass, for we burnt it; his loss was always scored against me.

Opinions are very various about lions. There is the young lady’s lion, a noble generous animal, that always kills his own mutton, and refuses all butcher’s meat; and the young gentleman’s, whose experience, perhaps, began at Wombwell’s, and ended at the Zoo. His is a cowardly, sneaking brute, a regular cur. There must be lions and lions. Those I have met with are not above eating what may be before them, asking no questions for conscience sake; but as a rule, if you will take my advice, you will hold as straight as you can when you pit yourself against a lion; and if you accept all chances without picking and choosing, you’ll now and again find yourself in a warm corner. Lions are not so plentiful as black-berries, or even as buffalo, and perhaps it’s better so. I do not think his rush is so quick or so resolute as a tiger’s, and he has a much better head to hit; still, he looks ugly enough when, with mane standing out as if electrified, and with a short, barking roar, he comes down to the charge. He will not, except when hard pressed by hunger, or when accustomed to feed off human carcases lying about after fights and raids, attack man in the daytime unprovoked. A surly beast, awakened suddenly from sleep, or disturbed while feeding, might be nasty; but he nearly always retreats before man, for the fear and the dread of one of Noah’s family are still a tradition with wild beasts. But even in the cases above mentioned his conduct very much depends on yours. In the daylight wild animals, especially the wildebeest and quagga, show but little fear, running up to within fifty yards, and gazing at him as if fascinated.

In my first journey I hunted for many weeks with a party of Bushmen, and gained many valuable hints about beasts and their ways from them; and, with regard to the lion, I learned that if you came unarmed on one, your best chance was to stand still and he would move off, but that if you turned and ran, he was nearly sure to make after you. Three times in my shooting life have I tested this advice—once on horseback, twice on foot. On the first occasion, without a gun, I came quite unawares upon a sleeping lion. He woke, stood up, and we looked at each other for a few seconds. Then he turned, walked away very slowly for thirty or forty yards, as if he wished to convey the idea that he was only moving to get out of such low society—throwing his head first over one shoulder, then the other, to see what impression he was making—and directly he thought he was out of sight broke into a lumbering gallop. If he shows an inclination to hold his own when met, the Bushmen stoop, and, with their hands resting on their knees, begin to walk very slowly towards him. He raises his head and watches the man suspiciously, trying to find out what he is about, and then, turning, retreats. I would not say that this plan would be always successful, but I firmly believe it is the best to try when you are unarmed. I have even stood thus twice opposite a wounded lion with an empty gun. Had I fallen back I feel certain my vis-à-vis would have attacked, for he was in neither case so crippled as to be unable to follow and overtake me. When the cubs are very small the male will show fight, to give the lioness a chance of making off with them, but this is rather a demonstration than real business.

I do not think our South African lion can be nearly so formidable as the North African, for I had the pleasure of once meeting the famous French sportsman, M. Gérard, and the animals he described far exceeded any I ever met with in size and ferocity; perhaps the climate and the constant badgering they get from the Arabs may be sufficient to account for the differences. Of course, if you take the war into his camp, he will fight, and he is a very dangerous opponent, from his quickness and strength. I see Sir Samuel Baker believes that he possesses more power in his paw than the tiger. I would not be understood as disputing such excellent authority; but a tiger can give a tidy pat, too—I have seen him smash in an ox’s head at a blow. Again, I have spoken of the lion as less resolute in his charge; but Sir W. C. Harris asserts that he is never stopped. This is not my experience, for I have sometimes known him brought up short by comparatively trifling wounds, and one actually by the cutting away of an eye-tooth by the bullet. He has two very distinct cries besides his roar and charging bark, one when questing, the other when full. Lying by the fire at night, Kafirs will start up at once and pile on wood if they hear the low panting moans of the first; of the second they take no notice, unless you call their attention to it. ‘Oh, he’s full; he’s going home singing.’I have once or twice taken the grunting of the cock ostrich for the note of the lion. It is much shallower; but it has deceived me. The Kafirs never make the mistake.

People looking at the original sketches of the pictures which are engraved in this book have often asked me how I felt at the time of the accidents. Much as other men would, I suppose, is all I can reply. We all belong to the same family. When trouble threatens, you shoot very straight, your muscles are rigid and steely for the time; if you come to grief the whole of your mind is bent upon getting away, and on that only. Some men have more of their wits about them than others, no doubt; but all pale faces must yield to the black skins in this particular. A man was cutting long grass to thatch one of Dr. Livingstone’s outbuildings when he came upon a buffalo, which charged. The man ran some little distance, but noting a slight depression on the ground, like a shallow ditch, threw himself down flat into it, holding on to the bush and grass with his hands. The points of the buffalo’s horns turn in, bowing out the middle—there was, from the man’s position, a difficulty in getting the points to bear, and before the bull could arrange matters satisfactorily to himself his nose came close to the Kafir’s body; in an instant he had hold of it, and pinched and wrung it sharply. The nose is the buffalo’s tender spot, and this happy thought of the native was sufficient to rid him of his assailant. Livingstone told me this story. I did not see it enacted, but I believe it; and it is illustrative of such presence of mind as would hardly be found in the European—living amongst wild animals and inheriting from generation to generation the instinctive knowledge of their natures, it would be surprising if the blacks were not in such things our superiors.

The buffaloes were in immense herds along the Mariqué River. As we were coming home one night rather later than usual from hunting, a white rhinoceros with a calf insisted on stopping the way. It was bright moonlight, and easy to shoot her; but the country was full of elephants, and I was very unwilling to scare them. We tried every way to get her to move, but no, she would not. We pelted her with pieces of wood, abused her roundly, and the men threatened her with their assegais, all to no purpose. At the last, very unwillingly, I was obliged to fire. She ran a little distance and dropped dead; but the report of the gun had awakened the whole forest to the left of us into life, unheard, unseen before. I rode up to the edge, it was a mass of struggling buffaloes jammed together. The outside ones, startled by the shot, and having got sight of our party, bore back upon the main body; hoof and horn, horn and hoof, rattled one against another, and for some distance I rode parallel with a heaving stream of wild life. I cannot pretend with any accuracy to guess their numbers, but there must have been thousands, for they were packed together like the pictures of American bison, and any number of ‘braves’ might have walked over their backs, so far as I could see, for any distance. In the moonlight, I could only, to be sure, make out my side of this seething river.

Two marches from the junction of the Mariqué we found elephants in such large herds that we halted a week or ten days, and the ivory as it was brought in was piled up under my waggon. Once whilst here, after a long day’s tracking, the night caught us and we had to lie out. We found water, but had no food—for you never shoot on elephant spoor for fear of disturbing your game, or losing your men, who settle down like vultures to eat. Kafirs hunt best hungry. It was a bitterly cold night, and how the men without clothes got through it I don’t know. I had no extra covering, it is true, save my saddle-cloth, a square of blanket 3 feet by 3; but we made a large fire, and lay all round it like the spokes of a wheel, and I don’t remember feeling much inconvenience, though I was a little stiff in the morning, for the fire had burnt low, and the ground, except where we had lain, was white with frost. One of the men had kindly roused me about midnight, with an invitation to partake of a tortoise he had caught and was stirring tenderly in its shell among the warm ashes. I declined with thanks. We were all quite fresh and merry when the sun thawed us, and as we neared our waggons we heard shot after shot in the bush around, every now and then catching sight of a buffalo. I thought Vardon had turned out with the drivers for an early ‘battue’—very much against his custom, certainly—but who else could it be? The mystery was solved directly I reached our encampment, for on the opposite bank of a small stream, which here ran into the Limpopo, I saw two waggons unmistakably Dutchmen’s. I was disgusted enough that anyone should dare to come poaching on our manor. But what was to be done? They were many, nine or ten, and we were but two. After breakfast one of my Hottentots, who had been herding the oxen in the direction of the Boers’ waggons, brought a message, or rather an order, that I was to go over to them. I returned for answer that if they wanted anything they could come to us. They took it quite in good part, and about ten o’clock, after ascertaining from my boys of what our party consisted, seven or eight of them crossed the stream and made their way up to our camp, having the good taste to leave all their roërs behind. We had a friendly chat, coffee and tobacco playing a considerable part in it, and filling up the gaps in my rather incomplete Dutch. Dear old Frank could never be induced to believe that Dutch was anything but bad English, and would occasionally put in a word or two of this latter in the worst grammar and pronunciation he could improvise. We smoked and we drank coffee, and we were amicable exceedingly, when one of my guests chanced to see the ivory under the waggon. They all got up to look at it—where did it come from?—who shot it? I said I had, and during the last few days. Alone? Yes, alone. ‘That must be a lie. A poor lean fellow like you could never have shot such a splendid lot of tusks.’ They appealed to my drivers for the truth, and when we returned to our coffee-pot, made an astonishingly liberal proposal that I should join and shoot with them, and take half the ivory killed by the whole party. They were in earnest, and I had the greatest difficulty in getting off; but I have reason to believe it was through the account of these Boers, and of another party I met at Livingstone’s station at Mabotsé, that I received the most courteous message from Prœtorius, who was then their chief, that he hoped I would visit Mahalisberg, and that I should find a hearty welcome throughout Boerland. They had a wholesome dread of traders, who for ivory might supply the natives with muskets and ammunition, and thus render them recalcitrant, and they had found out I didn’t and wouldn’t trade; indeed, the story among them was that on a native bringing a tusk to my waggon for sale I threatened to shoot him then and there!

Vardon was the most enthusiastic rhinoceros hunter; he filled his waggon with horns as I did mine with ivory; he used to shoot four or five every day, and there was always a freshness about the sport to him which seemed remarkable. He was an all-round shot, but best at rhinoceros. The mahoho is not bad eating—by the way, his hump is excellent—but there is a good deal in the cooking of pachydermata. We had a capital cook at the waggons, and had eaten elephant’s trunk many and many times. Two or three days farther down the river the men told me they had heard of a fine herd of bull elephants, about thirty miles off; as there was little water, or at all events not sufficient for the oxen, they begged me to take only a couple of horses and sleep two nights away from the waggons. John and I started accordingly with our guides, and at 5 p.m. reached the small spring where we were to halt. Early next morning news came of two tuskers being close by, and it was proposed I should begin with them and go after the large herd next day. I soon found and shot them. One, a very fine bull with large tusks, charged viciously after getting a ball through the thick end of the heart. The men brought it to me to look at when they opened him. We took a lump of the trunk, and returned to our sleeping place—only one woman had remained, the rest were off to the dead elephants. We were hungry, and John proposed we should cut part of the trunk into small lumps and boil them. On the fire they went, and on they were still three hours afterwards. John, who was a very hungry fellow, kept prodding the pieces with a pointed stick to see if they were fit to eat, but they were still springy. At length we voted them done and tried to chew them, but they were exactly like bits of india-rubber, and we could make no impression. The woman, seeing our difficulty, made us scrape a hole under the fire, roll the trunk up in its skin, put it in the hole and draw the ashes and fire over it, and in two or three hours it was done to a turn and excellent food.

Next day, about 4 p.m., we came up with the herd we were looking for—eleven bulls, all well furnished with ivory. It was so late in the day that we were in doubt whether to attack or leave them till the morrow, but as there was no water for the horses, I decided to go in at once, the more so as the elephants were standing lazily among thin bush in an easy country. Looking for the finest tusks, I rode out and killed the first bull without any trouble, but the next two gave plenty, and took more time than I had reckoned on, and the night closed in so rapidly that I was obliged to give up further attempts; had there been sufficient daylight I always thought I should have shot them all, for they were so tired and disinclined to run that they walked sulkily a little distance and then stood again. The men never forgave the want of light, and often asked me afterwards to press a herd till they were done up and then shoot them all, a programme difficult of execution as a rule—this might have been the exception.

I had dismounted, and we were making our fires when an elephant trumpeted fifty yards from us. He had probably lost his friends in the scrimmage and was trying to find them. I got within twenty-five yards of him, but could only see very indistinctly a mass of something, though he stood in rather an open place. There was no chance of my stalking any nearer. I might have run forward and got a shot, but it was too dark to play tricks. John squatted with the second gun and whispered to me to do the same, and, gazing steadily against the sky, I could now make out the elephant enough to tell his head from his tail-end. I fired—a shoulder-shot—and, stumbling a length or two, down he came. It was a good day’s work, though it might, as I have said, have been better; but four first-rate bulls and at least 500 lbs. of ivory lay within a space of three or four acres, and there were, besides, the two I had killed the day before, one of which had very heavy teeth.

We lit our pipes and smoked quietly for a time, and then remembered that we had breakfasted early and that we ought to be hungry and thirsty. The Kafirs suggested that as the elephants had probably come from the water in the morning, we should find some in their stomachs, and they immediately set to work and opened a large tusker that was lying close to our bivouac. They found what they sought and, after a good pull, invited me to partake. I was very thirsty, and they seemed to have enjoyed their drink, so, by their directions, placing a small bunch of grass as a filter, I took a mouthful, but—well! I immediately got rid of it—it was simply nitric acid. As the elephant was opened, however, the men were not going without dinner, and though I dare say it was horrible, there was at the same time something grand in the sight of the dark forest, lit sufficiently by the ruddy firelight to deepen the gloom beyond, with the naked savages, their blazing torches in their hands, walking about inside the cavernous ribs. A few choice morsels from the undercut of the sirloin broiled on the embers made a palatable supper, and, putting our feet to the blaze, we all fell asleep.

Whiz! ‘tao!’ whiz! woke me some time during the night, and, sitting up, I found the Kafirs throwing brands from the fire and shouting. A lion, no doubt attracted by the smell of blood, was tearing at the inside of the disembowelled elephant. I just got a glimpse of him, but it was too momentary for a shot. We slept, and were not again disturbed. I gave the dead beasts to the Ba Lala who had brought the information, telling them to send me the tusks, and returned to my waggon. The dozen were duly delivered in four or five days’ time, though the waggons had gone fifty miles farther down the Limpopo. It was always so. Once the chief of a large tribe of Bushmen came running—as we were inspanning for the march—with a request that I would shoot two elephants, which he had just seen coming up from the river, for him and his people. I was very unwilling to stop the trek; telling the men therefore to go on, and saying I would overtake them, I jumped on a horse and went off with my Bushman, he keeping well in front, though I was making a sharp canter of it. Through the bush, on to the open plain, and the game was in view. I dashed ahead. One had good tusks, and I settled down to him. He soon turned on me. I had been shooting buffalo the night before, and as there was only an ordinary charge in the gun, wishing to get rid of it, I fired at long range—forty yards, I dare say. The horse was fidgety, and the ball struck eight or ten inches below the backbone; to my astonishment, the bull took one stride and settled down quite dead. The bullet had cut the aorta. His companion had such small teeth I let him go free, and, making the carcase over to my Bushman, who was astounded at the easy way the animal had been disposed of, and telling him to keep the tusks till I returned, I galloped after my waggons. Three months passed before I was again in the neighbourhood; but while yet thirty miles off, the man, hearing that I was coming on, brought the ivory to me. I was delighted to gladden his heart and reward his honesty with a present of beads and brass wire.

Death of Stael

But the saddest of days was at hand. I had one preeminently good horse, the very pick of all I ever had in Africa—fearless, fast, and most sweet-tempered. Returning to camp one evening with a number of Kafirs, tired and hungry after a long day’s spooring elephants, which we never overtook, I saw a long-horned mahoho standing close to the path. The length of his horn, and the hunger of my men, induced me to get off and fire at him. The shot was rather too high, and he ran off. I was in the saddle in a moment, and, passing the wounded beast, pulled up ten yards on one side of the line of his retreat, firing the second barrel as he went by from my horse, when, instead of continuing his course, he stopped short, and, pausing an instant, began to walk deliberately towards me. This movement was so utterly unlooked for, as the white rhinoceros nearly always makes off, that, until he was within five yards, I sat quite still, expecting him to fall, thinking he was in his ‘flurry.’ My horse seemed as much surprised at the behaviour of the old mahoho as I was myself, and did not immediately answer the rein, and the moment’s hesitation, cost him his life and me the very best horse I ever had or knew; for when I got his head round, a thick bush was against his chest, and before I could free him, the rhinoceros, still at the walk, drove his horn in under his flank, and fairly threw both him and his rider into the air. As he turned over I rolled off and fell in some way under the stirrup-iron, which scalped my head for four inches in length and breadth. I scrambled to my knees, and saw the horn of the rhinoceros actually within the bend of my leg; but the animal wavered, and, with the energy of self-preservation, I sprang to my feet intending to run, for my gun was unloaded and had fallen from my hand. Had I been allowed to do so this story might never have been told, for, dizzy as I was from the fall, I should have been easily caught. Tottering a step or two, I tripped and came to the ground a little to the right of the creature’s track. He passed within a foot without touching me. As I rose for the second time my after-rider came up with another gun. I half pulled him from his pony and mounting it caught and killed the rhinoceros. The horn now hangs over the entrance to my front door.

That day Frank happened to be again hunting in the same direction as myself, and, hearing the reports of my gun, hoped I might have come up with the elephants I had started after in the morning. He found me sitting under a bush, hatless, and holding up the piece of my scalp with the blood streaming down my face, or, as he afterwards described it to Livingstone, ‘I saw that beggar Oswell sitting under a bush holding on his head.’ A few words told him what had happened, and then my thoughts turned to Stael. That very morning, as I left the waggons, I had talked to him affectionately, as a man can talk to a good horse, telling him how, when the hunting was over, I would make him fat and happy, and I had played with him and he with me. It was with a very sore heart I put a ball through his head, took the saddle from his back, and started waggonwards, walking half the distance (ten miles), and making my after-rider do likewise. Unless a man has been situated as I was then, it is difficult to make him understand all that the loss of a good horse means. You cannot even fill up his place in quantity, let alone quality. In this part of Africa, at all events, your success depends enormously upon your steed, for the country is generally too open for stalking, and he carries you up to your game, in most instances, as near as you like, and it is your fault if you don’t succeed. Had I been the best shot that ever looked along a rifle, and made of steel, I could have done but a trifle without horses, in comparison with what I accomplished with them. Armed as I was with a smooth-bore not very true with heavy charges at over thirty yards, it was a necessity to get as near my game as possible. I am not vain of my shooting—I can do what I intend pretty well at from ten to twenty-five yards—but I would have given the best shot in the world without horses very long odds; besides, from the saddle you see so much more of the country, and are so much more at your ease, and your attention for everything that surrounds you is so much more free.

On horseback your whole day is a pleasure to you, mind and body, whereas on your legs it is often a wearisome, unsuccessful tramp. Men going into Africa for shooting should be very careful in the selection of their mounts, and get the aid of some local friend or trusty acquaintance in their purchase, remembering always that five good horses are worth ten moderate ones and five brutes. For a season’s shooting eight to ten trustworthy animals, and five not quite so costly for your after-rider, will, with luck, be an ample provision. The number seems large, but there are accidents, sore backs, hard fare, and hard work to be taken into account. You may sometimes do with fewer no doubt, but there ought to be a margin for loss. Men who go to Africa with the idea that the game will come to them to be shot will find their mistake; ‘Dilly, dilly, come and be killed’ is not sufficient to fetch the African fauna.

Among my horses, I had many unbroken for riding; they had, I fancy, all been driven. I once bought a whole team—eight—out of a waggon. On my way up from the colony to the shooting ground I used to amuse myself by breaking them in. The method was expeditious, though primitive. We saddled a quiet old stager and tied the young one to him, neck to neck, allowing about two feet length of coupling, by the riem, or leathern thong which every horse habitually wears for knee haltering, or fastening up at night. By degrees, with coaxing, we got the saddle and bridle on, and then I mounted the young one over the back of the old, on which John or one of the Hottentots got astride. There was a little trouble at first with the pupil, but as he could neither rear nor back, and might kick as long as he liked, I sat quietly until he was tired, and then, putting the broken horse into a slow walk, persuaded him to follow suit; he generally did so, and after a mile or two, when he had become accustomed to my weight and movement in the saddle, I lengthened the coupling, little by little, and once or twice I have cast it off altogether and let him go free alongside the other in the first day’s march; but generally two or three lessons are necessary, and it takes a week or two to give him anything of a mouth. The principal trouble with the Cape horses is the inbred trick of bucking, of which I think they are hardly ever cured; they may behave well for a time, but just when you want them at a pinch, the vice recurs, and they leave you in a hole. Some, when hard worked and brought low, will go peaceably an ordinary journey, but anything unforeseen happening is apt to upset them. I had a very good-looking chestnut I bought out of a team, and broke to saddle myself, and he went well and steadily. One day something put him out, and he began bucking, not in the straightforward style of the trained horses of the Wild West Exhibition, which is difficult enough to sit, but in what we at the Cape call the half-moon, which is much worse, when a horse, without any warning, while going quite quietly, suddenly puts his head and neck well down between his forelegs and bucks right or left in a semicircle. I have heard many men say they can sit it, and perhaps, if expecting it, you might do so; but, in my experience, you nearly always part company. At all events, I and my chestnut did, four times, in as many minutes. The first time I was encumbered with the gun, but the three others were fair spills. I am sorry to say I lost my temper and meant shooting him, but thought better of it, and rode him down thin, keeping him so with work, till he was killed by the fly. Greys are not common at the Cape, and unless first rate, don’t buy one for elephant hunting; you will be seen sooner and longer, and pursued further in the charge. I had a cream-coloured dun, and sometimes it was very difficult to shake off his followers.

I found a very light S-cheeked curb bit, single-reined, work well—you often need to turn quickly. I wore hunting-spurs, and kept my hands quite free for gun and rein. The horses were unshod and sure-footed. Introduce them, if possible, gradually to their work by letting your after-rider use them a few times. He is always out of danger, and if once accustomed to the sight of an animal at a respectable distance, they can soon be driven up alongside of it, and get as eager in pursuit of elephant and large game as their riders.

By neglecting this rule, I very nearly came to grief on an afterwards capital pony. It was his début, and a wounded elephant charging with a scream, so terrified him that he was paralysed with fear, and stood stock-still after turning round; spurs had no effect, and how we escaped I cannot now tell. The bull came within a few feet of his tail and then wheeled. I can only suppose he got the scent of the human being, for he was quite near enough to have swept me from the saddle with his trunk. By a little careful treatment this pony became a very valuable one, and I once in after days shot 120l. worth of ivory from his back in half an hour. Have nothing to do with a vicious or uncertain tempered horse. If you find you have been taken in with such a one, shoot him; the first loss may not be so bad as the last. Never ride a stumbler up to anything that bites or butts. I had one, and he twice fell with me before a charging elephant. Luckily I did not come off, and pulled him up just in time to escape. Horses used to be cheap enough, but I dare say the price has risen. I mounted myself well from 7l. 10s. to 15l. apiece. Your ponies—for they are hardly more—ought to be quick getting their legs, and a turn of speed is desirable; for though in the open it is easy sailing away from an elephant, in bush or broken ground for 200 yards he will sometimes press a slow horse.

I was once, in particular, hard put to it by a smart though rather small bull. I had fired both barrels, and on he came. I might have had twenty yards’ start, but for the first 100 he gained on me, and I had to ride as if in a close finish. A good Hantam horse is an exceptionally tough beast. Whilst at ‘Oologs Poort,’ a farm then in the occupation of a Mr. Nelson, I was buying mounts, when a Hottentot riding a neat round-ribbed bay came in with a return-letter from the town of Cradock, as far as I remember, seventy miles distant. The horse’s appearance pleased me much, and though I found the owner, a Mr. Cock, at first unwilling to part with him, I at last purchased him for 15l.—a large price then; but he was worth it. He had just done his 140 miles in thirty hours, including five hours off saddling at Cradock. I was unfortunate with my horses, and lost this one early in the campaign. I had shot an eland or two just beyond the first chooi, and, being alone, had tied ‘Vonk’ (spark), as the men called him, to a tree whilst I gave the coup de grâce to the game. This done, I walked up to loose him and remount; but as I thoughtlessly placed my hand on the rein he got scent of the blood, and suddenly starting back, broke away. I followed him a long while, every moment hoping to catch him, as he let me come quite close and then trotted on, feeding quietly till I came up to him again. At length I grew weary and angry, and twice covered him with the gun, that I might at all events save my saddle and bridle; but twice I relented—the creature was too good and too tame to shoot, and there was a chance that I might find him next morning if he were not killed by a lion during the night. So I let him go, and just before sundown set my face towards the waggons, the encampment lying ten miles off. I walked really, I think, for once by instinct; it was soon dark, and after three hours, afraid of going astray, I decided upon making a fire and camping out, knowing I should find the wheel-tracks next morning if I did not overshoot them. I took out my tinder-box and trying to strike a light, dropped the flint, and was on my knees feeling for it on the ground with my head down, when a muffled shot, which I at first took for a lion’s pant, made me start to my feet, and within 100 yards of where I was standing, though hidden by a belt of thorns, by a second shot I was directed to the waggons. I had come quite straight down upon them through the night. We searched for the horse next morning in vain; his spoor was over-trampled by a large herd of quaggas, and for two years I never heard any more of him; when I ascertained a wandering party of Barolongs had found him in the veldt, and, unable to catch him, had driven him before them for thirty miles to their kraal, and had killed many giraffes and other game from his back, one or two of the tribe who had gone into the colony for work having learnt to ride.

Round the dead elands there was a typical African breakfast party—two lions, a dozen jackals, five or six hyænas, and an innumerable company of vultures. The lions, having fed to the full, were lying down close to the carcase, the jackals intently watching them, one of their party every now and then, when he thought the lions’ eyes were turned upon his companions or partly closed, running in for a hasty mouthful till a growl sent him to his seat again. A shambling hyæna, after many tries, for the beast wants dash, gets hold of one of the outside strings of the entrails and, pulling it taut, backs as far as he possibly can. Two or three of his friends invite themselves, and, rushing into breakfast, tug different ways. Vultures of various kinds stalk about tearing with beak and claw, and good right have they, for the invitations to the feast have all come through them. High up in the blue, entirely beyond your ken, they saw the game killed, and before you left the spot, if you had looked up, you might have seen the air alive with them. Soaring very high for an extensive view of anything going on for their advantage upon the earth below, their keen sight has comprehended the situation at a glance. Those immediately over the spot begin to descend, the message of there being something ‘down’ has been aërially communicated from battalion to battalion among the circling brotherhood, and through miles and miles of ether a game of follow my leader is going on. It is sight, not scent. An animal killed in a nullah, or in thick bush and covered up at once, escapes. The jackal, hyæna, and lion follow the birds. When the beasts of prey do not find the carcase—it may have been shot far from water—and the animal is thick-skinned, like the rhinoceros and elephant, and even the giraffe and buffalo, the beaks and claws cannot for some time make an entrance into their larder supply, and the birds sit about in solemn funereal state on the surrounding trees waiting for the softening of putrefaction, which is well established in two days, solacing themselves meantime with an eye or the inside of the mouth if they can get at it.

In this neighbourhood and between Lake Kamadou and the Zambesi the works of the ants are marvellous. One variety builds a dome-shaped nest, which makes a first-rate oven, for it is hollow inside, and by smoking out the inhabitants and lighting a fire it becomes thoroughly heated, and bakes well. So much has been written about the white ant that it needs no description from me; but though I was in India for years I never remember seeing their earthworks half the size they are in Africa, where I have come across them ten to twelve feet high, and so large and firm that I have ridden about the roofs, in and out amongst the pinnacles and minarets, which give them an appearance, let us say, of Milan Cathedral on a small scale! And all this is the work of blind architects, who are obliged to protect themselves from the sun and from enemies by a covered way they build between their nests and any of the trees around, which may have dead wood or branches. How their instinct leads them my reason cannot tell, for they are eyeless. Where there are no chairs or stools, one sits and lies upon the earth, and sees much of the kingdoms and communities of the insect world. Here is the ant-lion lurking at the bottom of his inverted cone of a hole, ambushed and ready to spring upon the incautious insect that, stepping on the edge of his trap, is carried to the bottom by the loose, unstable grains of sand; here the hard-biting, plunger-looking red ant, whose holes have been stopped when the breakfast was prepared and the surface swept for the skins on which we lie. Up he comes, having wired his way through his closed front door, sits on end, strokes what would be his moustache if he had any, and then, with a number of his fellow-sufferers and friends, walks straight to the nest of a large black species of his own family, and each throwing one of the blacks—about twice his own size—over his back, away they go to their own holes, and, pointing out the work to be done, stand with a fierce countenance over their slaves until all is put right, when the inferior race retire. Trapdoor spiders, too, were very numerous, with their cunning arrangements.

But I have wandered from the Limpopo.

The Bechuana are not of much account in hunting elephant with the spear, though they talk and brag a good deal about it; indeed I have known them fairly beaten and forced to come to me for assistance. I can see a young bull now, walking about quite strongly, with forty assegais in him, scattering his assailants by trumpeting and half-charges. ‘Would “Tlaga” come and shoot him for them?’ Tlaga did. The elephant looked like a porcupine, but they would never have bagged him, though he might have died afterwards. It is not so with the Bushmen. They are past-masters of the art of hunting, though here I would mention that there are Bushmen and Bushmen. Those found near the colony and spread over the barren Kalahari country are a small, stunted race, dwarfed probably by scarcity of food and hard usage. The others are upright, tall, sinewy fellows, who with their skill in hunting and the abundance of game never suffer hunger, and who are looked upon, though small in number, with a certain amount of fear by the Bechuanas. I was very fond of the Bushmen. They tell the truth, which the Bechuana do not, and instead of being mere pot-hunters they are enthusiastic sportsmen, enjoying the work as much as yourself. When you are hunting with them, it is true, they leave all to you, and greatly delight in watching a tough fight with a savage bull, giving you full credit for your weapon and your use of it; but their tactics when alone are as follows. Taking up the spoor of, say, five or six tuskers, they follow on until they see their quarry, which, with their splendid sight, they do a long way off. A handful of dust thrown up gives them the wind. Some half-dozen or more men conceal themselves in pairs not far apart in the line they hope the elephants will take. Two or three of the others, making a long détour, give them their wind, and as they move off, try to head them in the direction of the ambush. The moment an elephant comes within reach of one of the pairs a man springs up and, running towards him, throws a very heavy hafted-spear—twelve to fifteen inches in the iron head—not straight, for it would not penetrate—but in a sort of curve, and the descending weapon buries itself by its own weight. The man is in full view, the irritated beast usually makes for him, and though fleet of foot the hunter would very often be caught were it not for his mate, who, immediately the elephant charges, runs up behind him as close as he can, and sounds a shrill whistle, made generally of the leg-bone of a crane, which each wears hung round his neck by a leathern thong. The elephant hears it, and, cautious even in his rage, stops suddenly to find out what danger is in his rear. As he turns, another spear is thrown; another charge, and another whistle; and this goes on until the animal is exhausted and winded, when the final coups are given by men running in and stabbing him behind the ribs, while their companions occupy his attention in front. In this manner a dozen Bushmen will often kill two or three out of a herd.

The Boers have an effective, though cruel, way of killing them. Their legs are solid, not hollow with marrow, like those of most animals; they need to be strong, for a large bull weighs all six tons. The jägers come upon the herd and wish to bag as many as they can; they are not fond of getting too near, and bombarding effectively from a distance is a work of time, so they take the first shots, if opportunity offer, at the forelegs of two or three. The ball splinters and weakens the limb; the sagacity of the animal tells him this at once, and he instantly stands immovable, lest his weight should break it. The hunters follow the rest of the herd and shoot one or two perhaps, and then return to the cripples, who fall an easy prey to the roërs at close quarters. Nine times out of ten the elephant refuses to stir, but if goaded into attempting a charge, the bone snaps directly weight in motion is thrown upon it, and the poor brute falls. It is a most pitiful sight to see these fine, intelligent monsters quietly awaiting death—standing, sadly conscious of their inability to make an effort for attack or escape. I witnessed this butchery but once, and, willingly, would never again.

In the open country the Bechuana, though muffs at elephant hunting, catch large numbers of animals in the hopo. The Ba-Quaina and Ba-Wangketsi, especially, were clever at this kind of work. The hopo is a large pit dug in a favourable spot, generally just the other side of a slight rise, in neighbourhoods where game is abundant, and is often used year after year. From the sides of it stiff, diverging hedges of bush and branches are run out for a considerable distance, and the beaters, sweeping a large area of country in a crescent, open at first, but gradually contracting its horns as the game approaches the hedges, manage to drive slowly forward large masses of antelope, quagga, and wildebeest. Men are suitably placed here and there outside the range of the fences, to indicate gently to the game the way they are expected to take. When they are well within the lines the men bear down on them, and by shouts urge them forward pêle mêle to the hopo, which by the rise in the ground is hidden from the leaders until too late; for the weight of the scared body behind them, always pressing on, carries the foremost ranks into the pit, which, in a successful drive, is soon filled with a heaving mass of struggling life. Numbers of the driven escape through the hedges and through the crowd, by this time close up, many of them, the quagga especially, charging the drivers, who, sitting or kneeling, cover themselves with their shields, and ply their assegais as opportunity offers, from beneath them. I should have said that some of the hunters are ambushed near the hopo, and these dispose of any animals that, coming to the surface, seem likely to escape. The southern tribes manage sometimes to kill the hippopotamus by suspending a heavy spike of iron, or of wood burnt and sharpened to a point, and weighted with a large stone. This, by an ingenious contrivance, is fastened to the branch of a tree overhanging the animal’s path as it leaves the water at night to graze, by a rope attached to a catch, the other end of the rope being brought down, fixed about a foot from the ground, across the path, and tied to one of the trees opposite. As the animal presses against the rope the catch is freed, and down comes the spike. The northerners, who live on the shores of the lakes, Kamadou particularly, kill them from canoes with spears like harpoons, which, once firmly fixed, serve to show by their shafts the direction taken by the wounded beast, and enable the men to follow him and repeat the attack until, utterly weakened from loss of blood, he is secured by ropes and drawn ashore. This plan, which seems to me to have its drawbacks and dangers, is not attempted on the rivers, and I was never an eye witness of it, even on the lakes; but I have two or three of the harpoon assegais, and this was the story of the hunting as told to Livingstone.

On the low Siloquana hills near this we made our acquaintance with the Tsétsé fly, which we were the first to bring to notice; Vardon taking or sending to England some he caught on his favourite horse. They have now been thoroughly discussed entomologically, and I would only very lightly touch upon them. The Glossina morsitans is a dusky grey, long-winged, vicious-looking fly, barred on the back with striæ, and about the size of the fly you so often see on dogs in summer. Small as he is, two to three will kill your largest ox, or your strongest horse—for the poison introduced by the proboscis is zymotic; the victims sicken in a few days, the sub-lingual glands and muscles thicken, the eyes weep, a defluxion runs from the nostrils, the coat stares, and in periods varying from a fortnight to three months death ensues. On examination after death the blood is found to have diminished wonderfully in quantity, to have become gelatinous in appearance, and to have parted with its colouring property. You may plunge, your hands into it and it runs off like tapioca, without staining them. The vital organs, lungs and heart, are flaccid and anæmic, but show no further sign of disease. The flesh has a peculiar glairy appearance. Wild animals are not affected, but all domesticated ones are, save the ass and the goat, and the calf as long as it sucks. Man escapes scot free. The flies settle on and bite him sharply, but no results follow.

Supposing the poison to be alkaline, is it not possible that the creic—an acid known to be present in the blood of all wild animals and to disappear as they become domesticated—may act as an antidote, more especially as man, on whom the poison is innocuous, shares with the donkey, &c., this prophylactic acid? This pest, like all others, is held in check by an antagonist, one of the ichneumons—a rakish-looking creature which catches and sucks it out on the wing, dropping the empty cases much as the locust bird does the locusts.

These tsétsé have caused me sad searchings of heart. The Geographical Society of Paris honoured me with their medal, ‘pour la découverte du lac ’Ngami,’ and I, in acknowledging their highly valued distinction, sent them a short sketch of the country through which we had passed, and a small bottle of the flies, with an account of their habits, habitat, and the poisonous nature of their bite. This account—probably from my confused style—was entirely misunderstood, and when the copy of the Proceedings of the Society reached me I found I had been made to attribute the death of a native chief, Sebitoani, to the poison of these insects, and also to state that the oxen were maddened by their attacks, whereas the poor things took their deathbites quite calmly—with a whisk of their tails, as is their custom with other flies—and, as I have already stated, human beings suffer no ill. I have tried to correct this impression, but fear I may not have succeeded.

When I came home I happened to meet Dr. (now Sir Richard) Quain, the great toxicologist, and by him to be introduced to Dr. Spence, to whom I told the story of the tsétsé, the result being that I was invited to attend a meeting of the Entomological Society. Doubting my power of giving any clear account before such an august assembly by word of mouth, I wrote the few particulars I had to communicate. When I entered, rather late, a gentleman was explaining the abnormal and interesting peculiarities of a beetle, which had an extra tarsus—at least I think that was the peculiarity—and that tarsus was actually fimbriated! A great deal of very learned talk and discussion followed, and I thought what a fortunate fellow I was to have written my description; but alas! my turn came, and the same savant, after holding my scrawl at every angle in the hope of deciphering the cacography, at last gave it up, saying he regretted he could not make it out, but fortunately the writer was in the room, and would perhaps kindly tell them the history of the flies of which he had sent a specimen. I longed for a repetition of the days of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram just to swallow up that old gentleman and his scarabæus; but I had to get up and explain that I was sorry if they expected me to address them in the very erudite way I had been listening to for the last hour, as I really had no idea how many (if any) tarsi my fly had, and, moreover, I was supremely ignorant whether their tarsi (if existent) were fimbriated or not. They kindly begged me to tell my tale in my own words, declaring they should much prefer it, and I did so, and was dealt with in a most friendly manner. I certainly would rather have stood the charge of a couple of lions at once than laid myself open to a catechism on tarsi and fimbriæ.

We pushed down the Limpopo beyond the Siloquana ridge four or five marches, and then crossing the river near a high rocky hill returned to the Mariqué without anything of much interest occurring; but half-way between the junction of that river with the main stream and the place where we left it to get to Livingstone’s station, I was again in trouble.