IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) A {/ A A 4. ,V^ 1.0 !!:■- 1^ 2.2 U i/- IIIM 1.8 1.25 ■ 1.4 i 1.6 V] /a yW 7 /A Photo^aphic Sciences Corpoialioii 33 WIST MAIN STRUT WWSTIR.N.Y. US80 (716) •73-4S03 CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques i Technical and Bibliographic Notes/Notes techniques et bibliographiques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of this copy which may be bibliographically unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming, are checked beiow. D D D D D D D D D D D Coloured covers/ Couverture de couleur Covers damaged/ Couverture endommagie Covers restored and/or laminated/ Couverture restaur^e et/ou pellicul6e Cover title missing/ Le titre de couverture manque Coloured maps/ Cartes giographiques en couleur Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black)/ Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire) Coloured plates and/or illustrations/ Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur Bound with other material/ ReliA avec d'autres documents Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin/ La reliure serrAe peut causer de I'ombre ou de la distortion le long de la marge intArieure Blank leaves added during restoration may appear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming/ II se peut que certainen pages blanches aJoutAes lors d'une restauration apparaissent dans le texte, mais, lorsque cela itait possible, ces pages n'ont pas AtA film^es. Additional comments:/ Commentaires supplAmentalres: L'Institut a microfilm^ le meilleur exemplaire qu'il lui a 6t6 possible de se procurer. Les details de cet exemplaire qui sont peut-Atre uniques du point de vue bibliographique, qui peuvent modifiiar une image reproduite. ou qui peuvent exiger une modification dans la methods normale de filmage sont indiquis ci-dessous. I I Coloured pages/ D D G2 n Pages de couleur Pages damaged/ Pages endommag^es Pages restored and/or laminated/ Pages restaurdes et/ou pellicul6es Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/ Pages ddcolories, tacheties ou piqu6es Pages detached/ Pages d6tach6es I I Showthrough/ Transparence Quality of print varies/ Qualiti in^gale de I'impression Includes supplementary material/ Comprand du mattriel suppl^mentaire Only edition available/ Seule Edition disponible Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata slips, tissues, etc., have been refilmed to ensure the best possible image/ Les pages totalement ou partiellement obscurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une pelure, etc., ont 6te filmAes A nouvsau de fa^on A obtenir la meilleure image possible. This item Is filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/ Ce document est filmA au taux da reduction indlqu* ci-dessous. 10X 14X 18X 22X MX 30X 12X a 18X 20X 24X 28X 32X The copy filmed here has been reproduced thenks to the generosity of: University of British Columbia Library L'exempieire fiimt fut reproduit grSce A la gintrositA de: University of British Columbia Library The images appearing here are the best quality possible considering the condition and legibility of the original copy and in keeping with the filming contract specifications. Original copies in printed paper covers are filmed beginning with the front cover and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, or the back cover when appropriate. All other original copies are filmed beginning on the first page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impression. The last recorded frame on each microfiche shall contain the symbol — »> (meaning "CON- TINUED"), or the symbol V (meaning "END"), whichever applies. Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand cornar. left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les images suivantes ont 6t6 reproduites avec le plus grand soin, compte tenu de la condition et de la nettet6 de Texempiaire film*, et en conformity avec les conditions du contrat de filmage. Las exemplaires originaux dont la couverture en papier est imprimie sont fiimis en commen^ant par le premier plat et en terminant soit par la dernlAre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration, soit par le second plat, salon le cas. Tous les autres exemplaires originaux sont filmis en commenpant par la premiere page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la dernlAre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la dernlAre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbols -^ signifie "A SUIVRE ", le symbols V signifie 'FIN ". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent Atre filmAs ii des taux de rMuction diffArents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clichA, il est film* A partir de I'angle supirieur gauche, de gauche A droite, et de haut en bas. en prenant le nombre d'images nAcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants lllustrent la mAthode. :, t t :• . :ft 1 2 3 4 5 6 r % A '94^ SPORTS AND PASTIMES EDI'IEI) BY HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT, K.G. ASSISTKI) RV ALFRED E.T.WATSON B/G GAME SHOOTING 4 )1 ' ,1 i^ o < a o ta BKi (;ame shootinc ^ CIJVi: PHILLIFPS-VVO'LLEY WITH CONI KI1!':tiONS KY Slk SAMUEL W BAKER, W C. OSWEI.L, F.J. JACKSCjN VVARIU KfON PIKi:, AND I'. C. SELOUS !;■■_ , 1 mM vol,. 1. ..// ii.LUMi^A iUU\S nv i.//AKLhS U'lnMJ'KN, J. WOLF A, YD H. WII.J.INK, AND FliOM rHOTOGRAPHS lA.tNJJUN LONGMANS, C, R.EKN, AND CO. 1 8^4 All ftgH / 1 A.. BIG GAME SHOOTING BY CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY SIR SAMUEL W. BAKER. W. C. OSWELL, F. J. JACKSON WARBL'RTOX PIKE, AND F. C;. SELOUS VOL. I. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES WllVMrER, J. WOLF AND H. WILLINK, AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. Alt rights reserveii I/. / DEDICATION TO H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES Badminton : J/iy/ 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 Setter. 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 vm BIG GAME SHOOTING 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. msBB^mm HADMINTON PREFACE A FEW LINES only are necessary to explain the object with which these volumes are put forth. There is no modern encyclopjedia to which the inexperienced man, who seeks guidance in the practice of the various British Snorts 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 X X BIG GAME SHOOTING be found in the execution of such a design \vc 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 nnd 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 CHAl'TEK- I. On Big Game Shooting Generally . By Clive Pkillipps. Wolley. 11. South Africa Fifty Years Ago "^^.sr /^^sr' "^'^^'^-^^ '^-^" "y HI. Second Expedition to South Africa By W. Cotton Oswell. IV. Later Visits to South Africa By W. Cotton OsTvell. V. With Livingstone /n South Africa . By IV. Cotton Osjce//. VL East Africa-Battery, Dress, Camp gf.k AND Stores . . _ ' ' ^b' ^''- /. /ad'son. Vn. Game Districts and Koutes By F. /. Jad'son. VIU. The Caravan, Headman, Gun-i,earers, etc IX. HINTS on East African Stalking, Driving, etc By ^'' /• /ad-son. I 26 88 "9 142 '54 166 '76 185 xn CIIAI'TKR X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. BIG GAME SHOOTING The Elephant. By F. J. Jackson. The African Buffalo By F. J. Jackson. The Lion . . . • By F. J. Jackson. The Rhinoceros . > . By F. J. Jackson. The Hippopotamus . , . By F. J. Jackson. Ostriches and Giraffes . ■By F. J. Jackson. Anteloi s. . • . '. • By F. J. Jackson. The Lion in South Africa By F. C. Scions. BIG Game of North America By Clivc Phillipps- Wolky Musk Ox . • • • By Warhurton Pike I'ACJE 236 . 269 . 428 INDEX 437 "■'"^sw-i-ii^HBli ^BmmmsBSfSBii, ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE FIRST VOLUME {Reproduced l,y Messrs. Walker 6* Boutall) full.pa(;e illustrations Thk Lion's Last Charor . A Closk Shot MOLOPO RiVKR . ' • • Odds -3 ro i . ' ' • , FKRi.iNc; HOTit Horns ok a Dii.kmma Thk Drop Scenk • • • El.KI'HANTS-ZOUr.A Fl.ATS ThRKATEMNG ok KLKPHANTIAsrs A DiFKicuLT Stalk ' • • 'Tkicmim; WITH Gamk' Camp with Boma at sidr ThR BtrsHMAN's StRATACKM ARTIST C. Whymper Major H. Jones Joseph IVolf. »» »« »» C. IVhyinpcr KKSTI5JG THK 4.,.ORK ON rilK KALI.KN ) Trkk ... f I. I From a photograph ) I by E. Ged}^v j C, Whymper Frontispiece to face p. 8 • • ID M 90 t> 116 I 20 140 166 174 II II >i II M 198 aia a xiv BIG GAME SHOOTING ARTIST C. IV/iymper to face p. 244 Good Guides • • • " ' The Rhino raised herself like a ^ ^^ . „ 258 HUGE Pig A Family Group . • • • • A Group of South African Ante- \ ^ _ . Stand!:^ sTiix AS stone IMAGES . C. lVhy,nper . Moose at Home . • • ' .. • * ■ BR,T,S„ CO>.UMB.A . . ■ ■} t'-i'VP" 1 368 398 402 WOODCUTS IN TEXT Springbuck, Steinbuck, Blesbuck AND REEDBUCK . • • • ' Over the fai.een Timber . SKIN AND Pack. • • • Interlaced Antlers . ► Poor Old Sam . • • • " Vignette . • • • " " Death OF Superior . A Night Attack, Lupapi . . • • Post equitem sedet " fulva " cura' The Lioness does the scansion Death of Stael . . • ' MA5ELESS Lions . • • • Dead Buffalo . . • • C. Whytnpcr I From a photograph hy\ I /. Lord > C. Whymper H. IVilliiik . /. IVolf . !• • • • Easy Stalking Country . At last the Bull took a steps forward . ( From a photograph by \ E. Gt'dge C. Whymper vv.w \ II 14 17 24 25 52 66 102 131 1 54 168 193 ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME I A Bahv Elephant . " • • Dead Elephant , Bull Buffalo Bllssful Icnorance . *Often attended hy Birds' The Buffalo was close upon hlm ARTIST I C IV., after a photo- ] y graph by E. Gedge j ( From a photograph by \ i E. Gedge j C". IVhymper »» • . XV PAGE 204 216 224 226 234 Dead Rhinoceros and Gu.n-hfarfr [^''""^ a photograph by) ( F.J.Jacksoit \ "^52 * I was knocked over ' *I\ THIS AWKWARD POSITION' Dead Hippos. . C Harveyi, C. Petersi, N. mon- ] TANUS, and C. BoHOR . . p' C. IVhytnper \ From a photograph by ^ \ E. Gcdge IVhymp, )er F. J. Jackson TANUS, AND C. BoHOR Tlax of an Oryx Stalk I'l^AN OF A (JaZELLA CIrAN III StaLK ) ON KoMHo Plain ,- • . . I'l.AN OF AN IIaRTEUEEST STALK .... BuBALIS JacKSONI . r UM • C. IVhy viper Okyx Collotis and Buhalls Cokei KOBUS KOB . Adult and Immature Gazella ) (iRANTII . (• • . . The Walleri B.'sknegalensis Afv BEST Lion ' ■ • • • . 'SPRINGING UPON HIS VICTIM' . . c. IVhymper Mv BEST Koodoo ' ' • • • C. IVhymper C. ".Vhympcr 262 267 269 279 281 282 2«3 291 294 297 298 307 311 326 337 344 349 Wil i ' vl--",'.W'ff" XVI BIG GAME SHOOTING ARTIST Dead Grizzly I From a photograph by ' [A. VVilliainson, Esq. Specimen Skull of Black Bear ^^^\ pyg,n a photograph Grizzly Bear . ,• ' Spring in the Woods ' . Colonel Bedson's herd ok Buflaloes | C. Whymper C. IV. , from a photo- » graph ' C. Whymper A Pile of Buffalo Bones A Group of Bighorn . Mr. Arnold Pike's great Ram Rocky Mountain Goats AnTILOCAPRA AMERICANA . A Herd of Pronghorns The Record Head . Abnormal Palmated Wai-iti Head Woodland and Barren Groun Caribou Antlers . TYPICAL MULE DEER (C. macrotis . From a photograph Abnormal Head of Mule Deer From a photograph C. Whymper »> From a photograph 1 ^' \c. Whymper 354^ 370 379- 380 382. 386 390- 395 39S 397 . 414- . 419 . 420 The White-tail's Haunt . GUANACO, C. PALUDOSUS, C. COLUM' BIANUS . . • • • Musk Ox . Vignette . . • • * (C. W.,from a photo-] \ graph by J' I^ord \ \ C. Whymper ... //. Wi/linh . 422 42s 428^ 43$ BIG GAME SHOOTING CHAPTER I • ON HIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY By Cr.ivK Pim.i.iPi'S-Woi.i.KY Ir may be asked, as to these volumes, why *Big Game Shooting ' should find a place in a scries 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 ' Springlnick. ''Steinlnick. ■"• Hiesbuck. ^ Reedbiick. I. B ft- BIG GAME SHOOTING '^l 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 — civili- sation. , In Africa, hunting and exploration have gone hand in hand ; in America the hunters have explored, settled, and de- veloped much of the country, replacing the buffalo wich 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 ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY 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 pos- session 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 c lin 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 u 2 BIG GAME SHOOTING ;i 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 circum- stances 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 countr5;nen. mim^Hm^' ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY 5 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 some- thing 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 h''s 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 ''as one good quality in his favour, but even that quality varies wiih 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 eye- lash 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 con- venience, 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 ma^ who shoots well at a mark is a poor shot in the woods ; bu* luckily the converse of this proposition is also true. Again, strength and endurance, steady nerve and quick ■mmm SSSSn 6 BIG GAME SHOOTING eyes count for much, but they alone will not make a man suc- cessful. 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 pro- bably get it ; if it don't you won't, and you wouldn't any way. Somehows,' he generally adds, 'them bull clicks alius 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 ;it 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. ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY First, then, study the habits of wild animals generally. They are much the same all the world over, and n 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 tijere he won't let it lie whilst he passes. You won't see ////// swing round, saving himself a bit and leav- ing 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. I'hat is the way in big game shooting too. Partly from ex- perience, and partly by in:,tinct, some men know where to look for a beist, 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. J ust at and before dawn most r.'n:::aimCT??ttar'''!itii'-'; i^'l'llliSHB 8 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 uni- versal safeguard of the beasts which men hunt, but all are not as keen of scent as the cariboo, nor all as wonderfully cjuick and loiig-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 l)lind on occasion, and no beasts seem capable of quickly identifying objects which arc stationary, tho'j.orb all catch the least movement in a second. I'his ot course is where the man who rests often gets an advantage. It 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 ([uarter of an hour's tramp ; but on a mountain side, where stones are constantly falling from the action ot sun and wind and rain, ibex, sheep and other mountain beasts will often take but little or no notice of the stones y^u dislodge during your climb. Only be careful that these stones do not fall too often or at too regular intervals. ' - . In Scotland stalking is almost the only form of luinting deer ; in America and other wild coun cries there are two prin- cipal forms of .sport — stalking and still hunting; the one prac- tised 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 l)ig game now harbours. In this scries stalking has already been dealt with, so that with this form it is only ncccs.sary to deal briefly ::3C ■r mtafcr i Bu- S i a «' 8TO a Min f . 1 - "^fm ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY 9 here. The wind is the stalker's deadhest 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 scay in camp or hunt in the timber down below, rather than risk disturbing game when the winds arc 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 aliout 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 nc 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 ot retrieving your error if the wind is in your favour. If, for in- stance, in riding f'-om cam[) 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 \yord to your men, and let them either ride slowly on or stop absolutely stationary in the same sjjot, whilst you slide out of your saddle and creep avvay on )our belly amongst the grass. Above all, t/icy must keep in fit U view of the stiig, and if they do thii'. 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 4 wmmmm lO BIG GAME SHOOTING distance from himself, you will have time to get round and make a successful stalk. Even the hinds will be too intent on watch- ing 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 un- awares, 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 followmg 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. 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 stand- ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY ii ing 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, crouch- ing (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 mis- took it. 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 ssould in the course of a few weeks have learnt to find his own game, and when he had Over the fallen timber 12 BIG GAME SHOOTING found it he would have secured for himself those first invalu- able 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 excital)le 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 unap- proachable 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 br 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 ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY 13 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 extra- ordinary shots at long ranges. Pay no attention to them. If you cannot gcL wiLljin 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 shoot- ing 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 1 50 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 with- out 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 .1 " 3L" ^!T^!^?r^^W5B5 t4 RIG GAME SHOOTING 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 Skin and pack 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. 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 ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY i 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 downwa.'-ds. 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 con- venient 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 liead 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 i6 niG GAME SHOOTING 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. 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 dis- couraged ; no, not even i"*" you should follow him for many hundred yards without finding a single splash of blood upon the trail. Don't lis'.cu co 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 o/T 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 ^1^ ON BIG GAJfE SHOOTING GENERALLY 17 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 utir )st 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 oart of what has been written so far applies either to shooting big game generally or to stalk- ing : 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 iloor become absolutely Interlaced antlers rr-wmm m t^ i . . . » i.B B/G GAME SHOOTING 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 softesi material, with moccasins or tennis-shoes upon his feet, but who always has a hand ready to move an obstinate briar or obstruc- tive 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 posi- tion, and watch the woods, peer througii the thickets, and make certain that they are untenanted, before you i)lunder through them. When a log upon which your eyes have been dwelling mm ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY 19 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 ffet 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 .iounds 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 fircones which the squir- rels 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, lluu groting of one bou;'.';h 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 ^Iiat angry squirrel across the canyon was actually chatter- ing not because he had seen you, but because he was disturbed l)y a bc^r passing by the log on which he was sitting. Ikit the language of the woods can only be Kiarnt by resi- dence amongst them, and this is esi)ecially true of the written language of tracks, which is to my mind one of the few things utterly beyond a white man's powers ev. I : Never. you kr.ow )iad 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 de- serves to be tried for hislife, unless he be avery 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, anu 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 liunting. When you have followed deer under pines heavy .."th snow, through saM.nl bush which looks like doej) billows '. . the same, only to find, the first time, that your Lyman sight If tiv.wn, and the second time that though erect the peephole is t.. • r ice, you will recognise the merits of a Paradox with the .'.,)lest sights for wood shooting in any weather as thoroughly hi as the writer docs, and whilst .admitting the merits of the l.yniaii sight for long-raiige shooting in fae open, eschew all hut 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 Somalilan. it unsafe to fire -to keep their attention concen- trated 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 dc gustifms non est disputaiidum. Night shooting is another form of sport, sometimes ren- dered 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 ts 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 sus- picious 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 si)eaking, 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 C'hoose a sjjot where you have some chance of making out his outline against the sky if he should come, and whether ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY vou 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 arc especially shy of returiiing 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 stc-y, of course, as plainly as if the unfortunate sportsman had been a witness of the per- formance. The principal ditificulties in this kind of shooting are to keej) sufficiently quiet to induce your bear to come, and to see your sights sufficiently to kill him. even at short ranges, when lie has come. do to the spot as lightly clad as possible, carrying any spare tilings you can on your arm ; don't hurry or overheat yourself on the way to your ambush, and put 0!i a si^re flannel shirt or coat, or whatever it is you are carrying, befor^^ 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 youj rifle, while the thuml) and finger of your left hand, as they embrace your rille 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 be'ter than nothing if you get c;uight in the dark with no better ap[)liances. After all, a sport which kee[)s you \ip all night, and in camp without any exercise all day, and which depends for success so entirely upon the good will ol the bear, is not one to hanker after. Ily the way, when you have shot your l)ear (if you should I shoot him), and when you ha\e taken his hide off, be careful I— ir—i 24 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 Poor old Sam shot, merely because 1 )()bbin had been asked somewhat sud- denly to carry the hide of a two-year-old black bear. In all American sj)ort, 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 I'ike 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 ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY 25 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 enter- tained, 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. ?6 BIG GAME SHOOTING CHAPTER II SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO By W. Cotton Oswei.l WILLIAM COTTON OS WELL: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH By Sir Samuel \V. 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 Euro- pean 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 i, 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 worla-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. SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 27 At that time Osvvell with his comi)anion 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 assist- ance 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 require- ments, 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 Living- I stone and his party, Oswell received the medal of the French (Icographical 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 succesKi\e travellers. Oswell was not merely a shooter, but he had been attracted Itowards Africa l)y 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 [)ortions of South Africa which are now well known. His lliaracter, which combined extreme gentleness with utter recklessness of danger in the moment of emergency, added to omplete unselfishness, ensured him friends in every society ; hut it attracted the native mind to a degree of adoration. As the first-comer among lands and savage people until then un- known, he conveyed an impression so favourable to the white nan that he paved the way for a welcome to his successors. That is the first duty of an explorer ; and in this Oswell well ^\un'od 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 28 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 par- ticle 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 whi( h 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 i86i,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 «S: Co. for Mr. Oswell. This use- ful gun was sighted like a rifle, and carried a spherical ball of the calibre No. to ; 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 ; thecovering adhered tightly to the metal, which was now ready for SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 29 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 l)e accomplished easily, the great trouble was the adjustment of the cap upon the nipple, which with an unsteady horse was a work of difficulty. 'I'his 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 ap- pearance might perhaps have been produced by an exceedingly coarse rasp. The fore-portion of the stock into which the ramrod was inserted was sf) 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 rnimal .'t speed. In .this manner at a gallop he was obliged to face the low scrubby ' wait-a-bits,' and dash through these unsparing thorns, regard- less of punishment and consequences, if he were to keep the game in view, which was absolutely essential if t!'. i';imal were to he 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 tra- versed at the highest speed during the five years' unremitting pursuit of game upon the virgin hunting-grounds of Southern BIG GAME SHOOTING 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. lo double-barrel smooth-bore. It was very accurate at fifty yards, and the recoil was trifling with the con- siderable charge of six drams of powder. This could be in- creased if necessary, but Oswell always remained satisfied, and condemned himself, but not his gun, whenever r shot was un- satisfactory. He frequently assured me that, altl h he seldom fired at a female elephant, one bullet was suffii-i^..c to kill, and generally two bullets for a large bull of the same species. Unlike Gordon Gumming, 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 ; SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO but it is certain that they have disappeared, and that the report of the rifle which announces the advance of civiHsation lias 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 wwite rhinoceros has almost ceased to exist. Where such extraordinary changes have taken place, it is 1 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,' land although his retiring nature tended to self-effacement, all [those who knew him, either by name or personal acc[uaintnnce, [regarded him as without a rival ; and certainly without an jenemy : 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.' BIG GAME SHOOTING i ! ,■■■ « m INTRODUCTION V,\ W. CtvnoN OswKi.i, I have often l)een asked to write the stories of the illustrations given in the chapters on South Africa, but liave hitherto decUned, on the plea that the British [lublic had had quite enough of Africa, and that all I could tell would be very old. As I now stand midway bet>veen 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. Noi':on Longman at the same time promising thai, if suitable, he would fmd them a place in the Badminton volume on ' Big Clame," I was over-persuaded, made the attempt, and here is the result. The ilkistrations are taken from a set of drawings in my ])ossession by the best artist of wild animal life 1 have ever known Jose|)h Wolf After describing the scene, 1 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 i)oints, 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 im[)0ssil)le to depict at the moment of their occurrence, so that ever\ if the chief human actor had been a draughtsman he must have trusted to his memory. Hai)pily I was able to givt 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 re membered that they have to be spread over five years, and that these are the few accidents amongst numberless un- eventful days. I was once asked to bring these sketches to a house where I was dining. During dinner the servants SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO Zl l^laced them round the drawing-room, and c\x\ coming upstairs I found two young men examining them intently. ' What's all tiiis ? ' one asked. ' I don't know,' the other replied. ' Oh, I see now,' the fust continued, 'a second Haron Munchausen ; don't you think so ? ' he incjuired, appealing to me. We were strangers to each other, so I corroborated his bright and f ertainly pardonable solution ; but they are true nevertheless. 1 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 dv^fined boundary, the other with a hazy one, over which if your reader or hearer pass but a foot's length he is i', the realms o{ myth. I think I had 'uy full share of mishaps : but 1 was in the saddle from ten to twt>i'. ^ nours a day for close upon five seasons, and general immunity, perhaps, induced carelessness. I may say now, I su[)posL', that I was a good rider, and got cjuickly 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 pinion of a Purdey of lo-bore, which burnt five lor six drachms of fine powder, and at short distances drove ts !)nll home. This gun did nearly all my work I hr;d |l)ositlcs a 12-boie \\'estley-Ricliards, a light rifie, and a heavy ingle-barrelled one carrying twoo/. belted balls. This last vas a beast of a tool, and once I never gave it a second hance nearly cost me my life, by stinging, without seriously ivounding, a Inill elephant. The infuriated brute charged nine r ten times wickedly, and the number might have been ouliled had 1 not at last got hold of the I'urdey, when he ell to tiie first shot, ^\'e had no breech-loaders in t.ose days, ave the disconnecting one, :;nd that would liave 1 -cn useless, nrwehad to londas wegallo[)ed ihrough the thick bush, and the lock and barrel woukl soon have In.en wrenched asundv.'' or so trained as tu prevent tl»eir coming accura!ely into contact g;iin. The I'urdey gun has a second history which gives it more liue in my eyes than the good work it did for me, I lent it I. D 34 BIG GAME SHOOTING to Baker when he went up the Nile, and it had the honour, I beh'eve, of being left with Lady Baker to he 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 chiefs 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 accownt of personal adventure, I must apologise j 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, Living stone — and capital servants, wiio stuck to me throughout. I never had occasion to raise a hand against a native, and my frjt only once, when I found a long lazy fellow poking his paw into my sugar tin. If I remember right, I never lost any- thing 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 ceitainly a persona grn/(t, for 1 filled their stomachs, and mmmmmmmmmmmmm SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 35 tlnis, 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 st'.rs 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 o);ieh air. It is I useless to tell me of the advantages of civilisalfion ; civilised I man runs wild much easier and sooner than thtf savage becomes Itamc. I think it desirable, however, thatflie should be suffi- [cicntly educated, before he doffs his,rClothes, to enjoy the change by comparison. Take the wrfd of one who has tried [both states : there are charms in th^vild ; the ever-increasing, rover-satisfied needs of the tame my soul cannot away with. r.ut I am writing of close upon fifty years aeo. Africa is kuarly used up ; she belongs no more to the Afr and the [leasts ; Boers, gold-seekers, diamond-miners and e.\t»eriuiental "anuers— all of them (from my point of view) mistakes— 1- ■ changed the face of her. A man must be a first-rate sports- nan now to keep himself and his family : houses stand where a' once shot elephants, and the railway train will soon be [vhisUing and screaming through all hunting-fields south of the 'anil)esi. I) 2 •immmtmrnm m>» BIG GAME SHOOTING FIRST EXPEDITION TO AFRICA .i^ii 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 1 ! I gained strength by the voyage, and, shortly after reaching Cape Town, hearing that a Mr. Murray, of I-introse, 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, aud set our faces northvards. We were all bitten in those days by Captain — afterwar.is Sir Cornwallis — Harris, whose book, published al)out 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 exrellent 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 T have known the thermometer to register 92° in the shade at 2 P.M., and 30'' at H p.m. I was younger, and though still weak from the effects of fever, ilio dry air of the uplands daily g.ivo me vigour, and the absolute freedom of the life "as delighthil to me. Just at first 1 had to become accustomed to the many little annoyances of missing oxen, strayed horses, iVc. : but when our waggons became our /ii>///(\ md our migratt)ry state our life, all anxious care vanished Things would be ])ul right somehow ; there was no use worr) ing ourselves : what had been yesterdj'y would be to nu)rrow. What though mmmmmmmHmmm SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO n the flats between the Orange and Molopo Rivers were full of sameness, they were also full of antelope, gnu, and quagga. 'I'hese, 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 un- necessarily with an account of them, and besides, I am not writing of the country or its appearance, but have merely under- taken to try nd give some idea of the game that once held possession of it ; and, indeed, I doubt very much if I could r.onvey any no'ion 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 (jL-arter miles— I once saw them to the left of the track, along a slightly rising ground, thicker than I ever saw sheep. I sup- 'no^e tliey must have been trek hokken ; that is, a collection of [the herds over an extended area on the move for pasturage. 'J'he Hottentot waggon-drivers shot many of them, frequently killing; two at a time, they were so closely packed. 'J'hey were [to bo counted only by tens of thousands. Formerly, they used |<)t"tcii to invade the northern outlying farms of the Hoers, and Icstroy their crops ; and though shot in waggon -loads, they would still hang about as long as there was a green blade of mything. They were nearly as bad as t' e locusts, a flight of Iwhich wi' saw, by the wa)', a few days after leaving Kurunian, [mar tlu' 'C'hooi,' or large natural salt-|)an. We were at break- fast, when far down on the southeast hcri/on I noticed a wreath as of dark smoke rising rapidly, broadening as it ad- haiKH'd. In a very short time it enve'^ped us in the form a locust storm ; the whole earth and air were full of them ; ns of myriads settled, and myriads of myriads rode on ilaiiking in mimicry of armed cavalry, and crackling like jii llanie devoiuing the stubble. Look which way you woifld - [nothing but locusts ; they did not hide the sun, but they [so ol)N( ured his rays liiit )()u co' M look straight at him. 38 BIG GAME SHOOTING i I ' .' No simile seems so apt to me as that of a heavy snow- storm with large '^.akes, and this uninterruptedly for two or three hours. Though the land before them was not exactly as the Garden of 1 wen, verily behind them it was a desolate wilderness. As the told 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 destruc- tion, 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 springkhiin vogc/, 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 alcove you is cltar, and though the evidence of the curse is upon the earth, and remains, the locusts them- selves 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 stoie. One night, Livingstone and I lost our way, and seeing the light of a fire, made for it. Around it sat a family of liushmen ; 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 shrii.;,>-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, iiuench lines of small firc^ placed in the hopes of turning them, cross rivers, million^ jum[)ing in, and millions getting over on the living raft. \n SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 39 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 V)ush. By nearly all these salt-pans there is a sjiring 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 hr.ve been a better watered country than it is now. In the diiest 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 up- lifting of the surface, and a consequent sinking away of the old torrents and streams. 'J'he Bushmen and the elephants dig in these courses for water, whi.:h 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 ramfall 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 th reed in his sucking-holes mentioned elsewhere ; the latter grows with fleshy roots, and from the joints are thrown out delicate fibre.s ending in small tubers which, through the excessive drought and heat, act as reservoirs of moisture, thus sustaining vitality and enabling a l)right green carjiet 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 /ones. Tlie birds do likewise; one beautiful hawk happily called Ironi his graceful movement J/^'/<'A^ shotjuan^ 'he flows as he turns'— is a most assiduous attendant in the green-room of nature. lUit the thunderstorms are very partial, lor two days 1 have passetl through country so drv)uglit-strickcn that ii' 40 BIG GAME SHOOTING the bushes were leafless, the twigs dry, the grass dust, the ground iron, and all ani;iial, bird, and even insect life com- pletely 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 re- ceived all the kindly hospitality, attention and advice possible from him and Mrs. Moffat — verily the two best friends travel- lers 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 Mabotse, 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 Kuru- man. We had crossed a little stream called, I think, the Merit- sani, and one of our men, while cooking some tit-bit of an antelope Murray had shot far away from the can.ip, 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 tlame 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 difflculty 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 dis- ai)pointment 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 ihc 500 or 600 miles we had come. Seven different kinds ol animals were within view, some, especially^ the (iuagg.i.s t, the com- ;\v the een the mother of that i we re- iossible s travel - ctionate ■ earnest to go to miles or I counsel ng Kuru- ,c Merit- bit of an carelessly ff, and by ound the watch the [ bush and isects, and taring, the raining the lling llanu' xl the edge :ss, its dis- i left. :he Molopo itlle stream idea of ih^' lit kinds ot he ciuaggas ii tV-fi ' it! SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 41 and the buffaloes, in large herds — springbucks, hartebeests, iiniis, »S: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 riduc 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 r)oo 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 \allty of the Ba-Katla, a broken country full of game, was >trelched out before us— in those days a hunter's paradise. I'or the first time tracks of rhinoceros, giraffe, and other unknown creatures were abundant, and we longed to cultivate the rlosest relations with them. Without any just cause I thought myself a better sportsman tlian 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 earher 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 cahn, 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 a> (inly Kafirs can eat. ' What are those brutes gorging them- selves with?' I asked my (juiet 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! iiulecd ' ' in an easy nonchalant way I flattered myself, as if 42 BIG GAME SHOOTING 'a' ■ 11; 11 •If i 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 Hved. 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 sump 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 i>ori/i (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 witli 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 s(}uatting. 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 bo pierced ; whereas, fired from a lower level, the ball passes 'through both lungs, and brings him up in loo or 200 yards. A rhinoceros very seldom drops to the shot. Of all I killed, but two fell dead in their tracks. K.xclusive of the Quebaaba {R. Oswel/ii), which was probably a variety of the mahoho, SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 43 {R. Sunns), and of which we killed three and saw five, there were three kinds — the Mahoho, the yc". Africanus, and the R. Keitloa} I say 'were,' for whilst I write I hear that the dear old mahoho is extinct. I am very sony. 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 {<:: young gunners to try their 'prentice hand on, and directly the Kafirs got muskets he was bound to go ; though, con- sidering the numbers there used to be, I hoped he would have lasted longer. He had no enemies to fear, save man and the hyiena, and the first without fire-arms would have made but liitlc impression on him ; for, although sometimes taken in the pitfalls, he was never, so far as I know, killed by spears. Til. hyrena, when hard pressed for food, would occasionally alt^'Li: 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 ' Anoliier seems to have teen evolved recently, if I may draw that inference from a highly-coloured jirint I see in the shop-windows intituled : 'An African rliinoceros hunt.' A gentleman, on a fiery rearing steed, is engaging the enemy at very close quarters, and, unless he is a left-handed gunner, on the impossible side, as he is riding in the same direction as his quarry, and at its mar shoulder. He may not be answerable for this position of affairs ; it looks awkward, but he appears content, and holds his gun firmly by the middle, muzzle in air. The rhinoceros is the interesting figure in the picture, for he is mttikd, like the Asiatic variety, and is either a late discovery, or an escaped specimen from the travelling show of some .African W'ombwell. Rhinoceroses arc puzzles to others Ijesides artists. .\n old yeoman farmer, many years ago, lay dying near my house ; to amuse him I sent some sketches and odds and ends, and received a message thanking me, but putting me straight as to those /Jto-horned creatures being rhinoceroses ; the rhinoceros had but one horn, he had seen it in a book, and it was no use my saying it had two, for it hadn't. I suggested to him that we wanderers, who went far atield for hunting and shooting, had a hand in making the books, but ho wouldn't have it, and died a firm believer in one horn. wmmmmmmmmmmmmm imMiH ?"; ii ii m (if I 44 B/G GAME SHOOTING 1 ■,'! ■ " f '^ \ 'III' 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 sports- man, and has no doubt led to their too rapid extinction. If you found four or five together, and wounded one nior*^ally, he would run cJt with the others until he fell, and then the survi- vors would make a circular procession round him until the gun was again fired, and ahother wounded. Off they would go again, iialting and repeating the performance when the second fell, and so on to the end. The female was an affec- tionate 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. Tliough they were a very meditative inoffensive lot, there was a point at which they drew the line. I once saw N'ardon i)ull a mahoho's tail ; this, however, was taking too great a liiierty, and if I had not i)een i...ar he might have suffered, but, as the heavy brute swung round to give chase, a ball at very close quarters stopi)ed him. We have often been obliged to ilrive them from the bush before camping for the night. They apparenti)' mistook the waggons for st^me huge new beasts, and were Vijry trouble- some ; l)Ut this hallucination was not conluied to the mahoho. A borili in a great jjassioii away to the east ci the l,iin])0[)(), charged I.ivingstonc';^ waggon, smashing his iron bak iig-pot. The borili is lidgety, apparently alwa\s :n bad health, .ind con- stantly on tiie look out for a tree to scratch his mangy hide against. Me 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-delined pn. lensile lij- Thfj keilloa, or more equal horned variety, is a mixture in form and leinjier Itetween the mahoho and the borili ; nuicli arger than the latter, with differently shaped body, head, and horns, an(J less deveU)pment of liji. "''lie mahoho and (iiiebaab.i Uve on grass, tlie end of the latter's liorn from its downwanl curve being abraded by contact with the ground as he feeds. SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 45 The horiii 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 aitc~ched to it ; apparently it is only kept in its ])lace by the thickness of the skin, and yet, as I mention here- after, 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 rend t it less liable to fracture at the base, and in itself it is tough enough, though consisting only of ai'iglutinated hair ; but I am only wondering that, uUached as it is, it should possess the necessary rigidity for the work it does. It is occasiotially u.sed in the most determined way by rhinoceroses who have mutual difierences 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. I'or his l)ulk 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 hip[)()potanuis, an even more ungainly beast, has the decency jlo remain most of his *ime in the water, but the * chukuru ' thinks it behoves him to bask in the sunlight and parade his ugliness. vStaiuhng motionless is the routine of his life, a scrub now and then against a tree his dilasscmcnt- \ very isolid, st(»lid brute ! These creatures ai)pea'- to me to be out of lime, to have |bel(tngod to a former state of thing^s, and ti»have been f«)rg()t ten jwheii the change was made. Often have I sat upon a ridge and looked at them as they moved solemnly and clumsily on |llu> plain bilow, wondering ho>v they still came to be in this ! world, and it has occurred to me how delightful it would have ilicen to watch the pre .Adamite beasts in the san»e way, and k.un tJK'ir manners— which, I fear, were bad as they came 46 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 l)y 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 expres sion by which they mean to convey that they are your guardian birds. They are not always quite unfailing. Going out from Kolobeng after elephants 1 had heard of in the neighbourhood, I passed an old rain-doctor, whom I knew well, making rain with his pot on the lire, and his herbs and charms on tin bubble. 'Chukuru ami, where are you going?' he asked. * To shoot elephants,' 1 replied. ' I was just making rain, but as you are my chukuru, I put it off till to-morrow.' Is ii necessary to say 1 was wet through in half an hour? A fiiu heavy thunderstorm was brewing whilst he was boiling. 'I'his rain-n\aking is the Kafir's pet superstition the power is hereditary believed in by the maker and his fellow-country men. Conditions difiicult to kct'i) are imposed, such as thai ■m SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY VFARS AGO 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 Mabotse, Livingstone's station, and on our arrival there received every kindness and attention from him and Mrs. Livingstone, guides to the country 10 the north, with advice as to route, &c. Livingstone had not long got over his lion mishap -get over it altogether, in- deed, 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 Mabotse. A lion had killed an ox near the 1 village, and the Ba-Katla turned out, as they always did when the I lion deserted his game, and attacked their herds. Each man, las 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, ri'he lion was tracked to his sleeping place, and the men made a [ring round it. gradually closing the space between man and man las tlicy advanced. Presently the quarry was roused and sat up, [and then a spearman, takini, a few steps in advance, threw his lassegai. The thrower is generally charged, but the animal's |fittention is immediately taken off l)y a second spearman and second assegai, and so on until, i)oor beast, it is killed. [Accidents seldom occur in fairly open ground, as the men [.support one another very coolly and effectively. In rocky l])hi(es the sport is dangerous ; sometimes, howe\er, even in [favourable spots, the man is pressed closely by the beast, and [ill then as he runs plants the stick with the plume tu-mly in he j^roundand dodges away from it ; the lion, half-blinded by rat^e, sees something before him, and springs at the t>strich feathers, giving the man a chance of escape. In Livingstone's tasc they had lost the lion after wounding it, and were looking or it ; the dear old Doctor caught sight of its tail switching ba( k- [Nvards and forwards. Up and off went a gun that would hardly have killed a strong tomtit. Livingstone was sjum (i\cr eif^ht or ten feet, and the lion was standing over him. jl he l)nite look his arm in its mouth ;uu! put a heavy paw on 48 BIG GAME SHOOTING the nape of his neck, from which he pushed it off, for, as he said, ' It was so heavy, man, and I don't Hke to be stamped on ' — neither did he ! The Hon was then driven off and killed. Livingstone was so quiet and im[)erturbabie 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 role 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 1 think he overlooked that we, with no knowledge of the lan- guage, 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 fiiin 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 Mabotse. 'I'he 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 luavv short-handled hoc till she droppetl her jirey and slunk into cover. This man was her husband 1 Would Mrs. Smith do as much for Mr. Smith? Tould she do more? We pushed on from Livingstone'., station and hunted through the country of the ISa-Kaila, the people amongst whom he was living. It was tlicn full of game, and put me m mind of the children's i)ictures of .Adam naming the beasts in the Garden of lulen -more animals than bushes. The first giraffes fell here, Murray again .scoring, and killing No. i. We seldom shcn tlic^e beautiful-eyed, gentle-looking creatures — only a cow as a dainty now and then, for the (lesl of the female ma SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 49 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 detect- ing 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 concjuers his fears, l)ut I have had regular fights with faint-hearted ones, (let 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 lame after the novelty is over. I woulil utter two words of warning with regard to hunting the giraffe. Do not ride close behind him, for in his i)anic he sometimes lashes out most vigorously — I have had his heels whiz very ominously within a few inches of my head ; and my friend N'ardon, in pistolling one that was standing wounded, only just missed what might have been serious injury from a viciiius 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. 1 have measured bulls (|uite 18 feet — 6 feet of leg, 6 feet of body, 6 feet of neck. 1 "or their peculiarity of shape, shared by other Afrit an animals, there must be a reason. Now we can understand that * a deer with a neck that was longer by half than I. K 50 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 hyjKna has thought it necessary to follow the fashion. The animals of South Africa, indeed, are a (jueer lot — all countries have their specialiti' s, but Africa is all speciality — distinct are the giraffes, the gnus, the hippos ; adapted plus aquo 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 in- stinct 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 €< icgal, an outlying talook of the district of Coimbatoor, in the Madras Presi- dency, 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 j)ulp. The Bubaliis coffer is a stirring fellow when his blood is up ; you may shoot a do/en on a flat or in open ground, taking ycjur own distance for dismounting and shooting, and think them oxen ; but wound on^ 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 ui)-tracks, lying down or concealing himself behind a patch of cover. With his eyes on the ground the s|)ortsman is pickmg out the trail, when a hard grunting bellow to right or left m SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 51 makes him look up, and he had better l)eware and hold straight now if ever, for down comes the wounded l)ull, and nothing l)Ut 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 jmt 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 hind- most, a fine black-maned fellow, who seemed willing to sacri- fice 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 com- [)anions, seeing their rear-guard 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 Ufxjn anything I thought e(]ual terms they reached cover without a shot. I fouiui 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 ])reparatory 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 i)oint. K 2 52 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 Dentil of Su|H'ri<)r the spoor — but the ground was so torn and trampled I could not pretend to count. They had taken u|) 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 hud come to the front, the calves had been placed in the rear, and they had hold 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 SOUTH A I' RICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 53 liandsomely. More than half those hit got away — chiefly, I think, from our not having as yet adopted the squatting posi- tion ; 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, galloi)ed 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 olif, 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 l)all through his head. This lesson early in shooting experiences made me cautious in bufialo-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 api)earance 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 a[)art from the rest, in a dense patch of bush to the right : the sound of the gun and the rush of his com- panions roused him, and with ')ne barrel loaded, as 1 ran after his relations, I found myself fnce to face with him, within ten yartls. He was e\itlently bent o\\ misi hiet. We stared at one another for a second. 1 fired at his broad chest ; it was the best I could do, for his nose was up, and the points of his m re GA.]/E SHOOriNG 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 ste[)ping on one side, but the ground must have been in their favour, and they must iiave been very cool, and only resorted to this instinctively, I think, as a last re- source. 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 move- ment, and fear I should have made a mess of it, though I know it is possible ; for I once travelled •' \n 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 w^ith 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 i)uffalo watched that tree, walking round and lying down under it. How Piet got to terra firma again 1 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 Tiavels,' 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 wmmmm SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 55 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 1 write recollections come back of scenes that had left no vivid pictures in my mind, because nothing un- toward happened ; but why not, and how not, now one thinks of it, is wonderful. Stalking an antelope, or I know not what, 1 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 j)loughed field. I had the sensa- tion of drawing myself in very tightly aljout 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 1 say that in most parts, with horses, one gun could easily have kept 8oo men 6oo 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 f^r a long time. It needs # BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 reach- ing 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 plea- sure 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 Hon, 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 man- hood, 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 under- stand 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 SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 57 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 iit!^'e 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, 'i'hey 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 meeimg of the servants and trying what our eloquence might effect. After putting before them that we fully recognised our promise ot 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 am- munition 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. ' \Ve will all go ! ' was the cry. Do you think after that it was much matter to us whether our brother was blAck or white ? M 58 JUG GAME SHOOTING rime wore on. 1 was obliged to Rturn tf 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 del)t of gratitude. I hrd 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 lie should like, of all things, to go with me there. Two days later we were on board ship together. He, as usual, was e.erything to everybody — hel)>ing the steward, atters'^'ng tlie 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 cTall womankind. On arriving in >uigland. I left liim in I ondon and went down to my brother's. He hesitated aboi t liiy licnchmaii, ttjinking a real live black man would liarclly suit the household of a country clergyman. But his coachman fell sick. Could John drive? 1 s'aould think so. He was the best eighl-in bander in Cape Town. Down he came, and in half an hour he was perfectly established in the family. My brother det^lared 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 witli h.is reading. I s iiall not forget meeting liim with the two women, one on fitter arm, chatting with them in the most accomplished style. His stay in l-'.ngland was limited to six months, as we had igreeu, and he we^* bnck to the Cape with a iriend of mine, who wrote most highly of iiim. Two years jiasse:! away ; 1 was a wa«iderer again ; .and at the beginning of the Oimean War founci myself canying secret- service money to Colonel, now I'ield Marshal, Si Lintorn Sim- mons, |jolitical agent at Shumla. On my return to the coasi I fell in with a c.ivalry regiment and the 6oth Ritles encamped near Devna, a few miles from \;trna. A sergeant of the latter regiment saluted as 1 passed, and asked for news frtnn ihi- iVont. Silistria was then besiegid. I turned m)self half round to the right on my saddle to talk witli him, and j^rc- SOUTH AFRIC . I'lITY YJIARS AGO 59 scntly felt a haiul placed very .i^cnt/y, ioTiHo/y, on nn- left loot. John stood by my stirrup, his face a picture of affec- tionate triunij)!! at having caught me again. He had taken service with an officer n{ the 6oth. We threw ourselves d )wn under a bush and renewed old memories. 'I'he Major, near whose teiU we were, called John, and, fmding from him who I was, most courteously .'ntreated me, telling me how beloved (olm was by the regi.nert, and how well, through him, they knew my name. I had letters to deliver at Con- stantinople, 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 lame to me, asking if 1 <-ould recommend a bl;ick man named 'John 'i'homas ' as a biuKr I 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 ail the relations of lite (save that of a butler, in whi( h 1 had not tried him), I could most highly recommend him. My friend engaged him, and had an I'xcellent servant, for such was John's jiower of adapting him .self to circumstances that nothing ever came amiss to him. lUit the dark day was coming on ; ami, in the miilst of his affec- tionate servile, 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 liis sickness too late to see him alive on i-arth, but T trust that master and man may hereafter meet as brothers in Heaven. \Vc had been sliooting in this Ba-\Vangketsi country for a fortnight, and the work had been \ery hard. One morning alter 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. HIn la/iness was catching. 1 onlered my horses to be dnsadtlK-d, and was idling about the lamp when our head man told me there was i.o food for the twelve or 6o B/G GAME SHOOTING fourteen dogs, our nig'nt wat( hnicn ; 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, 1 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. 'I'wo hundred yards from the outs[)an I came upon a clump of quagga and wounded one, whi< h 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 directic^n 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 cjuagga, I started. It was now about 10 a.m. ; little did I think that 5 r.M. would still find me seeking three vans nearly as large as Pickford's, and half an acre of water. In my first cast 1 cannot say whether I gof wide or stopped short of the mark I was n^aking 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 1 very unwillingly owned to myself that 1 was drifting without bearings in this bushy sea. 'I'he 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 imi)Ossible, in the absence of any guid- ing point, to hold a fixed course through this ma/e of sameness. I tried walking in circles in the hopes of i;utting the wheel tracks, but though on ;i previous occasion this plan had succeeded, it now failed. As with empty gun 1 plodded on, (jccasional small herds of rooyebuck and XAwv 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 cari'd but little for |)assing a night i MaBMMMHHHBMII SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 6t in the jungle ; but, bewildered and baffled, I envied the instinct of the so-called brutes, which, careless of their ste|)s, were never- theless quite sure of their ways. Twilight near the tropics is very short. Just before the sun set, therefore, I iollowed a game track which 1 knew would lead to water, as it was still early in the season, and the rain supp-ly had not yet dried up in the hollows. At dusk I reached a pool similar to the one I had (juitted 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 |)artly in the ho|)e that as the night crept on signals would be made f om the waggons, I climbed a tree which stood by the side of the water, and had not been long perched before 1 heard, though so far off that I could hardly calch the sound, the smothered boom of guns. Alarmed at my absence my companions suspected the cause, and were inviting my return : but it re(|uired 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. Hut J had been wal.cing all day under a troj)ical sun, my clothini; was wet with per- spiration, and it now froze hard for freeze it can in Southern Africa — and I was bitterly cold. I determined to come down and light \\\\ hre. I knew it would la.st but a short time, but thought I would make the best of it, and thaw myself before attemi)ting to return. I g(>t t(') the lowest bough of my tree, and had placed my hand beside my feet before jumping off. when from the bush immedi.Uclv under me a deep note, and the sound of a heavy body slipj)ing through the thorny si rul , told me that a lion was |)assing. Whether the creaking of the tree hail roused his attention and caused him to speak so opjKJrtuncly 1 don't know, but without the warning, in another half second I should have alighted i 6a lUG GAME SHOOTING on his back. I very i|uickly 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 bj' 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 cramjjcd 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 '-jund of three or four muskets fired together. With the help of her light and partial direction in case my companions got tired of firing, 1 was not going to stay up a tree to be fro/en. 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, 1 came (Jown, and capping it was all I could do ; for, as I said, 1 had started without powder and ball- my empty gun. which was standing against the tree, I passed at the double r«)und the end of the water and (.lived into the bush on the opjxisito side. I have no doubt mv desirt- was to get on as (luickK as possible, but reasons for a atlious advance soon mad-- thi.inselves heard on all sides. .\n African forest was then alive at night. I only thought of the Inms, and esi)ecially of the two 1 hatl left, or perhaps not left, at the water; but every little novT^jrnal animal that stirred kept me on the stretch the less m.)ise the more danger. 'I'he movement of a mouse might well be mistaken for the stealthy tread of the king of the cats, .\mong die t revs the nH)()n gave but scanty light, and nearly every minute I had to sto[) and listen as some unseen animals |)assed near me. Sometin>es I could retogtuse them by their cry, but mostly it was 'a running that could not SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 63 be seen of skipping l)easls ' that troubled me, 'I'he onl) animal I really saw that night was a rhinoceros that, with head and tail uj) 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 deatii in the rear. But I strufjgled on for an hour, I should think, when, stooping to clear a low bough, four c five muskets fired together within fifty yards told me I was at home again. I hope I was thankful then ; 1 know I Zl\w 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 stillonly 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 y(ju, 'I'laga,' by a little this time,' said my black friends. ' Let him go back to liis game.' They 'rt-re right, for in the morning we found his spoor on mine for a long way back. \\ htther he had come with me from the water or I had pickicl up a follower in thr bush I never knew. Myconstantlv stopping and listening probably saved me, for a lion seldom makes up his mind vt ry suddenly to attack a man unless hard pressed by hunger. He likes to know all about it first, and my turning, and slow, jerky p«ogre.ss had probably roused his suspicions. Two nights before this we had met with a sad misfortune. 'I'he oxen were ' kraaled '- surrounded, that is. by a hedge of thorn trees, and bushes strong enough to keep them in and lions oui, we hoped a mode of defence we always adopted if thci',' was wood enough close to the outspan, or we inteniled staying any length ot lime in the same place ; though oicasionall), wht>n w\' only halted for the night anil were distant bum water, aiyd therefore likeiv to be free from lions, the oxen were instead ' lo my fiio iho Kafirs always n ox by the nape of its neck anywhere, but he can't carry it, much less jump a 6foot hedge with it in his jaws. It was (juite dark, but by the gleam of the fires the men, aroused by ihe panic of the oxen, caught sight of him, and one of the Hollcnlot drix eis 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 -^i -mc minutes, and then the lion, frightened jjrobably by the tiring and yelling we could give no other aid to our allies broke ba\, 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 l)cfore, feeling offended at a pufl" adder — the worst of the Cupe snakes hissing at him, he had «iei/ed it, and notwithstanding the snake striking him on the head with its fangs, had stuck to and killed it. Mis head swelled to an inunense si/e, but he pulled through and recovered. With day we went to the SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 65 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 watch- fulness 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 1 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 dogwatc h was set and the fires mad? up for the night. I-'ircwood was abundant after passing the Molopo. A store of huge h)gs 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 j)art of their duty. By this time we had shi>t most of the kinds of game to be found away from the rivers, in large numljers — Harris'.s black buck potoquan {Ai^O'-cms uiger), and the beautiful hill zebra {lu/ims montatius) 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 thmg, the size of a small Shetland |)ony, and the most playful little fellow imagin- able, springing about the rocky hill-tops with the surefooted- ness of an ibex. We had not yet fallen ui with elephants or even seen their tracks. Three years after the time ot which 1 am writing 1 killed them frcMpiently to the south, but now they were away to pastures new fur the time, and we decided I. F •I' 66 BIG GAME SHOOTIXG on going on north to the lia-Mungwato country in the hope of finding them. On our way \vc 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 1, ■ i ♦ I •/ .■ -^^ '-v5' \j < ij- « , ,1 • • 1 > •® 1^ km t- 1 .^. .■\ ni^lit attack — l.iipupi worst place for lions 1 ever knew ; not st) nuicli fiom their number as their insolent audacity. I stopped here on three sep.irate 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 lo p.m. or half-past we had only just turned in when we were attacked in force by two hons and a lioness. Our vedettes, the dogs, were driven in, and the enemy charged down upon the cattle enclosure. The SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 67 noise, of course, woke us all, and clogs, Kafirs, Hotten- tots, Murray and myself had our work fully cut out ; our assailants kejn 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 (some- one 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 creeprr, and I fell heavily. The Kafirs behaved admirably, never } ielding an inch, though the lions were very determined. After half an hour or so wc 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, tliough as we were looking into the dark we could see nothing. I'or some time I made a Kafir stand beside me and throw brands into the darkness, hoping l)y a gleam to get sufficient indication of the whereal)outs of our foes for a shot but in vain. I fired frccjuently as near as I could guess on the sj)ot where the purring seemed to come from, and could hear the angry beast make a dash at the pinging ball. Ikit 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 arountl 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 coukl not cut iier off, and 1 was savage enough at her unwishetl-for attentions during the night, for she was, no doubt, one of the three, and oh I how glad I was when T 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 squattiMl in front of a bush. I got within twenty or twenty-five yards of her, intending to dis- mount, but found I had fired all my k)ose balls away during the night, and that the one in the barrel was ail I had to U i! i 1 .: 6S lUG GAME SHOOTING rely on. 1 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 hill her entirely when on my feet. I could not remount, for the after-rider had removed the horse, and it is not pro- bable the lioness would have allowed me to do so without interference. For a moment I was in a fi.x, 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 1 wonder to this day that the beast did not charge when she saw the scrub moving as I i)assed 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 sui)posed, 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 sprmg, from which we were lying only 200 yards dis- tant. Ordering him to saddle two horses -they had not yet been loosed from the waggon-wheels to which we always SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY VFARS AGO 69 made them fast in pairs — I slipped on my clothes and, jum|)ing on the back of one of them, galloped towards the s[)ring, followed by John, half a dozen Kafirs, and the dogs, hoping to cue off mother and child from the thick bush behind them. r>ut they beat me ; and the dogs, taking the scent, followed them. I'he Kafirs had come with me, [partly to see the fun and i)artly, in case of my shooting the lioness, to catch the cub, which, when it is (juite youiig, they manage to do l)y 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 fiithei and mother, aunts and uncles, i\:c. 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 i)osition once or twice in the hope of making out what was going on, stand- ing 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 (juarter, 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 charf^o was on his r/j,'^/// flank, and you cannot shoot to till n..:ht. I did the only thing that I could — jammed the spi i'^ in and tried to make a gallop of it ; but my follower was itH close, and before 1 could get up full speed [ heard her strike the ground heavily twice in her bound, and with the third she sat up behind me. She jumped short, iiowever, and failed to get hold with her mouth, but drove her front claws well into the horse's (juarters, and a IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // // Ma « m I I.I 11.25 2.2 2.0 1.8 U ill 1.6 V] nwards, and, travelling slowly, came to it on the Q 2 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 detour 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 1 heard three shots in quirk 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 con- dition. 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 deci), 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-ride'" 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 ^—Oatig, * Look ! ' he cried. The pool was alive with monstrous heads, nnd though this was the first time I had seen the hipi)opotanius in the flesh— fat, per- SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 85 haps, 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 bSnk 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 Tor 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 'ios. a lb., when elephant ivory would bring only 5^. 6ench sportsman, M. Gerard, and the animals he described far exceeded any I ever met with in size and ferocity ; perhaps the climate and the constant badger- ing 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 com- paratively 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 pant- ing 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, SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA 95 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. 1 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 know- ledge of their natures, tt would be surprising if the blacks were not in such things our superiors. The buffaloes were in immense herds along the Marique River. As we were coining 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 J but the country was full of elephants, and I was very unwill- ing 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 96 BIG GAME SHOOTING \ \ us into life, unheard, unseen before. I rode up to the edge, it was a mass of struggHng 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 Marique 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 elenhant spoor for fe"r of disturbing your game, or losing your men, who settle doA^n 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 re- member feeling much inconvenienc ?, 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 nn 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 — l)ut who else could it be ? The mystery was solved directly I reached our encampment, for on SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA 97 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 ansv er 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 roers 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 pronuncia- tion 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 paity I met at Livingstone's station at Mabotse, that I received the most courteous message from Praetorius, who was then their chief, that he ho|:ed 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 am- I. H 98 BIG GAME SHOOTING munition, 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 j 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 fresh- ness 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 1 should begin with them and go after the large herd next day. I soon found and shot them. One, a very fine l)ull 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 SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA 99 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 dis- inclined 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 squrUed 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, stumb- ling a length or two, down he came. It was a good day's work, though it might, as I have said, ha\ li 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 wer°, besides, the two I had killed the day l)efore, one of which had very heavy teeth. We lit our pipes and smoked quietly for a time, and then II 2 [OO BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 ha\e 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 caverncus 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 ! ' 7vhiz ! 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 tbem, I jumped on a horse and went off with my Bushman, he keeping well in front, though I m SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA loi 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. But the saddest of days was at hand. I had one pre- eminently 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, 1 saw a long-horned mahoho standing close to the path. The ength 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 lino 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 de- liberately ♦^owards 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 I02 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 hoin 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 Death of Stael horn of the rhinoceros actually within the bend of my leg ; but the animal wavered, and, with the energy of self-preser- vation, 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 t'^M, for, dizzy as I was from the fall, 1 should have been easily caught. Tot- tering 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 SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA J03 my after-rider came up with another gun. I half pulled him from his pony and mounting it caught and killed the rhino- ceros. The horn now hangs over the entrance to my front door. That day Frank happened to lie 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 likev/ise. 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. I04 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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, un- successful 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 pur- chase, 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 coax- ing, 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 fist 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 move- ment in the saddle, I lengthened the coupling, little by little, and once or twice I have cast it off altogether and let him SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA 105 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 ditificult 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 io6 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 debut, 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 120/. 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 7/. 10s. to 15/. apiece. Your ponies — for they are hardly more — ought to be quick get- ting their leg;?, and a turn of speed is desirable ; for though in the open it is easy sailing away from an elephant, in l:.ush or broken ground for 200 yards he will sometimes pre-s j. 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 SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA 107 owner, a Mr, Cock, at first unwilling to part with him, I at last purchased him for 15/. — a large price then ; but he was worth it. He hac- just done his 140 miles in thirty hours, including five houis 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 grace to the game. This done, I walked up to loose him and remount ; but as I thought- lessly 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 liien 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 vv^as 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 ihe veldt, and, unable to catch him, had driven him io8 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 hyenas, 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 com- panions or partly closed, running in for a hasty mouthful till a growl sent him to his seat again. A shambling hygena, 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 ganie killed, and before you left the spot, if you had looked up, you might have seen the t'tir alive with them. Soaring very high for an extensive view of anything going on for their advantage upon the earth l)elow, their keen sight has comprehended the situation at a glance. Ihose immediately over the spot begin to descend, the message of there being something 'down' has been aerially cominunicated from battalion to battalion among the circling brotherhood, and through miles and miles of eiher a game of follow my leader is going on. It is sight, not scent. \x\ animal killed in a nullah, or in thick luish and covered up at once, escapes. The jackal, hytena, and lion follow the birds. When the beasts of prey do not find the carcase -it may have l)een shot far from water- and the animal is thickskiimed, like the rhinoceros and elephant, arid even the giniffe and buffalo, the beak;; 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 SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA 109 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 m ^ ; but though I was in India for years I never remember seeing their earthworks hdf the nize 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 pinnacle?, 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 com- munities of the insect world. Here is the ant-lion lurking at tlie bottom of his inverted cone of a hole, ambushed and ready to spring upon the itioautious 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 swe]>t 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 rcllow-sufiferers and friends, walks straight io the nest of a large black species of his own family, and each throwing one ot the blacks about twice his own size -over his back, away they go to their own holes, and, pointing out the work to be no BIG GAME SHOOTING done, stand with a fierce countenance over their slave's 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 bra^j 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. Th-j 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 frar by the Bechiumas. I was very fond of the Bushmen. Tlioy tell the trutii, 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 si)oor of, say, five or six tuskers, they follow on until they see their quarry, which, with their si)lendid sight, they do a long way ou. A handful of dust thrown u[) gives thein the wind. Some half- dozen or more men conceal themselves in pairs not fiir apart in the line they hoi)e the elephants will take. Two or three of the others, making a long dltour^ give them their wind, and as they move off, try to head them in the direction of tlo SECOND EXPEDITION 70 SOUTH AFRICA iii 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, macic 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 sudd .inly to find out what danger is in his rear. As he turns, anclher 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 hiin behind the ribs, while their companions occupy his attention in front. In this nmnner a dozen Bjsh- men will often kill two or three out of a herd. The Boers have an effective, though cruel, way of killing thcin. Their legs are solid, not hollow with marrow, like thosf of most animals ; they need to be strong, for a large bull wCri^hN iM six tons. The jiigers come upon the herd and wish ' 1 i.\>yr iti many as they can ; they are not fond of getting too ner... vie- bombarding effectively from a distance is a work of tinv. ^» '.eytake the first shots, if opportunity offer, at the foreieg.1 >f two or three. The ball splinters and weakens the limb ; the sagacity of the animal tel's him this a', once, and he instantly stands immovable, lest his veight should break it. The hunters follow the rest of the herd and clioot one or two perhaps, and then return to the cripples, who fall an easy prey the roers at close ciuarters. Nine times out of ten the . (; :'rfint refuses to stir, but if goaded into attempting a charge, li.i tione 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 — standings 112 BIG GAME SHOOTING sadly conscious of their inability to make an effort for attack or escape. I witnessed this butchery b.ut 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 ju ', .bo other side of a slight rise, in neighbourhoods where gair abundant, and is often used year after year. From the :des of it stiff, diverging hedges of bush and branches are run out for a ccnsiderable 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 p^ie mele 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 fore most 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 cjuagga 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 tl ! 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 Ijurnt and sharp- ened to a point, and weighted with a large stone. This, by an ingenious contrivance, is fastened to the branch of a tree over- hanging the animal's path as it leaves the water at night to graze, SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA 113 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 Hve 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 acquaint- ance with the Ts^ts(5 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 morsiians is a duskv grey, long- winged, vicious-looking fly, barred on the back with striaf?, 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 examina- tion after death the blood is found to have diminished won- derfully in quantity, to have become gelatinous in appear- ance, 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 anaemic, but show no further sign of disease. The flesh has a peculiar glairy appearance. Wild animals are not I. I 114 BIG GAME SHOOTING 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 prophy- lactic 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 ts^ts^ have caused me sad search ings of heart. The Geographical Society of Paris honoured me with their modal, * pour la d^couverte du lac 'Ngami,' and I, in acknow- leaging 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 sufier 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 in- troduced to Dr. Spence, to whom I told the story of the tsetse, 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 SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA 115 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 scarabaeus ; 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 cer^ tainly would rather have stood the charge of a couple of lions at once than laid myself open to a catechism on tarsi and fimbriae. 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 Marique without anything of much interest occurring ; but half-way between the jTmction 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. It was three in the afternoon. We had followed a herd of elephants since 8 a.m., and the traces of the dew of the pre- vious night were still visible on the trail. Our chances of coming up with them were so small that we abandoned the pursuit and turned in the direction of the waggons. After an hour or two the natives began to make pathetic appeals to the state of their stomachs, suggesting that they had met with hard la ii6 BIG GAME SHOOTING usage, and that, as we had not found the elephants, they were not above breaking their fast upon quagga, giraffe, or even rhinoceros. I tried to persuade them that elephant was the only dish worthy of them or likely to fill those almost bottom- less cavities to which they had alluded ; that we might have better luck the next day, and that they might put off dining till then. If you wish to be successful in hunting for large tusks, it is as well to keep your men on an elephantine diet and not pamper them with dainties, or they become lazy and care- less in seeking the larger game. Whether on this particular occasion I was unusually tender-hearted, or their appeals were too touching, I do not remember ; but whilst with my very poor stock of Sechuana words I was trying to explain my views, in an open glade of the forest through which we were passing, their hungry eyes fell upon two rhinoceroses of the keitloa variety, and the eager cry of ' Ugh chukuru, mynai\r ! ' — the last word a corruption of the Dutch mynheer, lengthened plain- tively into a kind of prayer— was too much for me, and I dis- mounted to do their pleasure. 1 ifty yards before the animals ran a scanty fringe of dwarf thorn -bushes, on outliers of which they were feeding away from us. I made a long detour, and came out a hundred yards in front of them, the little scrubby cover lying between us. A handful of sand thrown into the air gave the direction of the wind ; worming my way I gained the thorns, and, lying flat, waited for a side chance. The rhinoceroses were now within twenty yards of me, but head on, and in that position they are not to be killed except at very close quarters, for the horns completely guard the brain, which is small and lies very low in the head. Though alone on the present occasion, I was travelling with the best rhinoceros shot I ever knew, and liis audacity, and our constant success r '.d impunity alone and together in carrying on the war against i/iose brutes, had perhaps made me despise them too much. I had so frequently .seen their ugly noses, when within eight or ten yards of the gun, turn, tempted by a twig or tuft of grass to the right or left, and the wished-for broadside thus given, w 1-4 O a: o » o K O ►a M w that the forg me. witl pro ne£ the Nc pr( ho fee up up in to te b n n r t r f t ■■■I mmm SECOND EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA ii7 that I (lid not think anything was amiss until I saw that if the nearer of those now in front of me, an old cow, should forge her own length once more ahead, her foot would be on me. She was so near that I might possibly have dropped her with a ball up the nostril, and, had she been alone, I should probably have tried it ; but the rhinoceros, when he charges, nearly always makes straight for the smoke of the gun, even though the hunter is concealed, and I knew that if No. i fell, No. 2, who was within four or five yards of her, would, in all probability, be over me before the smoke cleared. In the hope that my sudden appearance from the ground under her feet would startle her and give me a chance of escape, I sprang up ; the old lady was taken aback for a moment and threw up her head with a snort. I dashed alongside of her to get in her rear ; my hand was on her as I passed ; but the shock to her nerves was not strong enough, for before I had made ten yards she was round, and in full chase. I should liave done better to fire into her as I went by, but it had not occurred to me, and it was now too late ; in my anxiety to escape, to put it as mildly as may be, I had neglected my best chance, and paid the penalty. 1 was a fast runner ; the ground was in my favour, but in thirty yards from the start she was at my heels. A quick turn to the left saved me for the moment, and, perhaps, by giving my pursuer my flank instead of my back, my life too. The race vms over in the next ; as the horned snout came lapping round my thigh I rested the gun on the long head and, still running, fired both barrels ; but with the smoke I was sailing through the air and remember nothing more, for I fell upon my head and was stunned. The day was fast drawing to a close when, though in that addled state which prevents a man from deciding whether to- day is yesterday or to-morrow, my brain seemed stirring again in a thick fog. By degrees I became aware that I was on my horse, that a native was leading it, and another carrying my gun beside my stirrup. It all appeared strange, but with the Ii8 BIG GAME SHOOTING attempt to think it out the mist came eddying thicker, and I was content to let it be. Presently a dim confused impression that I was following some animal was with me, as in a dream ; the power of framing and articulating a sentence returned, and I drowsily asked the nearest Kafir which way the trail led. He pointed in the direction we were going ; his manner struck me, but I had had my say, and no other remark was ready. Men met us ; among them I recognised two of my Hottentot drivers carrying a * cartel,' or cane framework, which served as a swinging bedstead in my waggon. * Where are you going ? ' I asked in Dutch. They stared stupidly ; ' Why, we heard you were killed by a rhinoceros ! ' * No,' I answered, ^Vithout a thought of what had occurred, my right hand fell faintly from the pommel of my saddle to my thigh ; with the restlessness of weakness I drew it up a^ain ; a red splash of blood upon my cuff caught my eye. I raised my arm to see what was the matter ; findmg no v^ound on it, I sought with my hand for it down my leg, through a rent in my trousers, and, so numbed was all sensation, that I actually dabbled down to the bone in a deep gash, eight inches long, without feeling any pain— the smaller horn had penetrated a foot higher up, but the wound was not so serious as the lower one. The limb stiffened after I reached the waggons, and, unable to get in and out, I made mv bed for nearly four weeks under a bush — the rip, healing rapidly, covered with a rag kept constantly wet. The rhinoceros, as I afterwards learnt from the men who were with me, was running so fast when she struck me and lifted me so high, that she had shot ahead before I fell, and, on their shouting, passed on without stopping. The horns, as is generally the case in this variety, were of nearly an equal length, so that one to a certain extent checked the penetration of the other — as it would be more diflficult to drive a double-spiked nail than a single one. The bone of the thigh, however, providentially turned the foremost horn, or it must have passed close to, even if it had not cut, the femoral artery. 119 CHAPTER IV LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA By W. Cotton Oswem. Vardon went home to England, I think, and I returned to India to finish my time before taking furlough in 1847. Early in 1849 hearing that Livingstone intended mak ig an attempt to reach Lake 'Ngami, Murray and I again left England to join him. The Doctor had quitted his old missionary station, and was now with Sechele at Kolobeng. As we neared this place, whilst we were lying at a small spring called Le Mawd, or the needles, from some pointed rocks which over- hang it, the Kafirs told me there was a shorter way to Kolobeng through the hills, but they doubted if it would do for the waggons ; so I volunteered one afternoon to examine it, and report for the onward move of the next day. I started at 2 P.M. on a good old horse, and had followed a winding track through the stony hills around us for an hour or more, and, as it seemed likely to answer, was thinking of returning to camp. We were at a slow walk when a low grumbling growl woke up man and beast, and on looking back I saw a lion within fifteen yards, coming up at his wicked slouching trot. He was too near to give me a chance of dismounting, and I spurred into a gallop ; but he gained on me, and, in the hope of checking him, I fired a shot Parthianwise from the saddle. The bough of a tree swept off my hat, and, as it fell, the lion made a spring at it, giving me a moment's law. Fifty or sixty yards ahead there was a small, rocky, but otherwise open space, and to this I pressed at best ''A':- I20 BIG GAME SHOOriNG speed. I pulled up, as I could see well around, intending to load the barrel I had fired, and bring my friend to account ; but my foot was not out of the stirrup before he was again on me. 1 was alone, and the horse was so scared I could hardly hold him ; but, freeing my foot, I caught the reins over my left arm, fjiced the oncomer, and threw the gun up to fire ; just as I coveied him, and my finger began to press the trigger, I was violently pulled back, and my arm jerked up. The lion still came slowly on, with his body sunk between his shoulders, and his brisket nearly touching, the ground- When withm twelve yards, I shouted ai him, instinctively, hoping to stop him. The human voice acted like a charni ; he stood, and made as if he would turn away. The horse, seeing that he no longer advanced, left off tugging at the rein, and I snatched the opportunity and fired my remaining barrel. The bullet struck the point of the shoulder, and rolled him off the little rocky plateau into the bush below, where he lay roaring, without my being able to ge*: sight of him. I went forwards to look for and settle him, but had to give it up, for my horse, which I had tied to a tree, did not at all approve of being left alone, and tried to break his riem.. I coaxed him, and as long as I stood by him he was quiet, but directl\ I turned to leave terror seized him. I could not afford to lose him, so I mounted, and attempted to ride him near enough to get a sight and shot ; but the tremendous noise was too much for him, and neither spur nor hand had any effect. He stood up on his hind legs, and broke into a white lather of sweat. I persevered for a time, but had to give it up, and, breaking a few twigs and leaves from the trees to make myself a kind of substitute for my lost hat, got back to cami). Next morning, after putting the waggons on the path I had looked out the day before, Murray, I, two Kafirs, and three dogs ' went on ahead to pick up the lion. We had just ' I linve said hut little of our dons, but tlu'y ileservo nu'iition. 1 never shot with tht'iii ; l)Ut besides Kuardiiij^ the lamp fmiu .surprise, they wenr in- valuable, as in this instance, in helping us to pic!^ uj) a wounded lion, or in re ai w n n h fi c c e LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA 121 reached the place where my hat had been torn off by the tree, and I turned round to teU the Kafirs that he must be hard by, when an angry growl to my left and then the shriek of a man told me that something had gone wrong. Jumping off my pony, I ran into the scrub, guided by the sound. I had hardly got fifty yards when, bursting through a thicket in front of me, a man, covered with blood, fell at my feet, crying out that he was killed by the lion, and at the same instant I caught sight of the beast close up on three legs, his mane as if electrified into an Elizabethan collar, with the Kafir's dog in his mouth. As his head came clear of the bush I put a ball through it, and he dropped dead by the native's foot. I looked to the yelling victim, and found he was terribly bitten in thigh' and arm ; so, tearing my shirt into strips, I bound him up as well as I could, never expecting him to live, for large surfaces were mangled, and I had to replace much a good deal at hazard. As I finished the waggons came up, and, lifting the wounded man on a blanket into one of them, I took him honv . made him over to his wife, gave her a hantlful of beads and a yard or two of brass wire to purchase food whilst 1^ was laid up, summoned the chief, said I was very sorry an ac nt should have happened to one of his men, received his assurance 'hat it was not of the slightest consequence, especially as i had killed the lion, and then, as there was no water for the oxen, I moved on. In se\en weeks I returned to this village. The first to meet and welcome me was my wounded friend, quite well and sound, and about to start on a journey. He brought back the blanket on which we had carried him -I had left it at his hut cleanly washed ; and when I told him to keep it his joy was so great that I think he would have had the other leg bitten for a like reward. The recuperative power of the telling us iho wheiciihouts of n hard-hit anibuslied buftiilo— in this illustratiDH thi' (log in the hon's mouth was the Kafir's, and tiie other two were llie best I ever had (the lilvenesses are admirable). I have known them hold a lion at bay for nearly an hour, the larger one heading him continually, and the little rough Skye-looking fellow running in at intervals, nipping him in the rear, and then scuttling otVtit full sjieed. 122 BIG GAME SHOOTING wild man is marvellous. A European must have died of the wounds, or the consequent fever. The native, it appeared, had stopped behind, as we came through the pass, to m>.,nd his .sandal, and, taking a short cut to rejoin us, had chanced upon the wounded lion, which first seized him by the large back muscles of the thigh, and on his striking him over the head with his fist, shifted his grip to the arm, which was munched up to the elbow, though no bones were broken. I have before said, lions do not attack men in daylight without strong cause. I opened this one, and found the stomach and nearly the whole of the intestines absolutely empty ! The beast was starving - he had evidently bled all night, and was very weak, a fact which may account for the man's getting off easier thai, one would expect. My journey with Livingstone to Lake Ngami, and my sub- sequent visit to the Zambesi in the same company, have been fully described by the Doctor himself, and though on both oc- casions I had to kill game for the camp, they do not fall within the category of shooting expeditions. They were made with other ends in view, and would be out of place in a narrative of this kind ; it will be sufficient to say we were successful in introducing two new antelopes' the 'Nakong and the Leclie, The latter, of a dark fawn-colour, with horns annulated and curved like the waterbuck's, only smaller, was found on the flats between the shallow lake Kamadou and the Scshoke plains, west of the Zambesi, the former .about Lake 'Ngami, and in the marshy land and pools of one of its affluents, the Teoge River. It is a veritable swamp-liver, about the size of a goat, with long, brownish hair, and horns resembling those of the koodoo in miniature. The abnormal elongation of its hoof enables it to skim over the surface of morasses into which other antelopes would sink. I have one, which I have just measured, vtry nearly four inches long — if it were in the ratio of the animal's size, * We heard of a third antelope which was said to burrow, but \m never saw it. Has any later traveller anything to say al)out it? or is it a myth.' 'I'he Ka?-i were precise enough in their description. LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA 123 one and a half would be its proportion. On hard ground the 'Nakong runs with difficulty — the swamp shoe is a hindrance. Instead of escapl.ig by flight or concealment in the bush, this antelope, on being disturbed, makes straight for the water, sits down in it, and submerges all but the nostrils until tue danger be overpast. When Murray and I reached Kolobeng in 1849 we found, for some reason or other, Livingstone had already started, but we caught him up beyond the Ba-Mangwato, with the chief of which tribe we had again a little difficulty. By the way, six or seven miles south of his kraals we found a hot, brackish spring, which bubbled up as if laden with gas. Our trek to the lake was a hard one, and we were very anxious to see some of the dwellers of the desert, that we might gain information of the path and waters in advance ; but messengers from Secomi, chief of the Ba-Mangwato, had gone through the land ordering all Bushmen and Balala to keep out of our way, and by no means to give us any assistance. If they happened to be anywhere near our line of march, they had instructions to step heavily on their toes, and, pressing the sand behind them, to make as good an imita- tion as they could of frightened wildebeest or quagga. We noticed these tracks, but were never able to use them to our advantage, though we saw throi gh them, for in that land of thirst we could not afford time to fjllow the trail of people hostile to our advance, with perfect knowledge of the country and its hiding places, and likely to l>;ad us in their flight as far from water as they possibly could. That they were often about us, even quite close, we knew ; but we never sighted one. A little dog strayed one day into our camp : we caught it, and covered it with rings of beads, brass wire, and tinder boxes, then loosed it with a sudden crack of the waggon whip, in the hope of its running back to its ambushed masters and giving evidence of our friendly intentions ; but nothing came of it. Again, I tried to lure our uns n watchers through that most sensitive organ, the stomach. Elephants trooped down one 124 BIG GAME SHOOTING night to drink ; in the morning I took up the spoor and shot one immediately, but after wounding a second had much trouble with him in the thick bus! the horse falling before the charging bull, and I only just esca^.ing. Months afterwards, on our return from I-ake 'Ngami, when there was no further object to be gained by opposition, we were encamped at the same pool, and were soon surrounded by the children of the wilderness, who recounted and acted the story of the elephant hunt ; how they had followed and found number two, which escaped at the time, and eaten him ; how they had witnessed it all as invisible spectators ; and now, turning actors, they en- joyed the play vastly : trumpeted like the elephant, fell like the horse, and imitated my attack and retreat, and the noise of the gun. During this journey, when very hard up for water, I offered to sacrifice a pony and ride on in advance of the slow- moving wtiggons, which were to follow on my spoor, on the chance of finding what we needed so sorely. John and three or four Kafirs accompanied me, and we had travelled I dare say twelve miles when I saw a patch of high grass wave as if something were passing through it. Thinking it might be a lion, and if a lion then water was near, I cantered to the head of the ' Jheel,' dismounted, and watched the line of movement. It came to the edge, and some living thing broke from it. I covered it, and only just in time saw it was a woman running, or rather crawling, very fast on all fours. I mounted in an instant, and shouting to the Kafirs to follow, I headed her and made signs to her to stop. She fell upon her knees, and in Sechuana begged me not to kill her. She had never seen horse or white man before, and evidently took me for a hi[)pogriff. 1 cahned her apprehensions, cut the metal buttons off my waistcoat, presented them to her, and asked where the water was. ' There is no water,' she said, ' I was just making something to drink ' (she was mashing a watery tuber in a wooden bowl) ' when I saw the pitsi (horse).' IJushmcn — she was of that people— we knew, lived for months without real LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA water, but I thought it worth while trying the experiment of offering her beads and brass wire if she would guide us to some. It succeeded. ' Well, if you won't kill me, I'll show you where the elephants drink,' she replied ; I bade her go ahead, and made her walk just in front. Never did any old lady step out through prickly bush as did my dame. Her bare legs were scratched by the thorns ; but what was thi;t to her, expecting instant death if she stopped a moment ? Ot; she went. Pre- sently we came upon an elephant. She suggest<,'d by signs that I should kill it, but I answered, ' Water, then elephant.' We entered a belt of high trees. I pressed even more closely on her, lest she should dodge among them and escape ; \yy pony's nose nearly touched her, and so we went through two n.iles of woo^. As we break into the open again, what do I see? The l^ke ! Can it be that I am the first to catch a glimpse of if ? We had voted it mean to s^and upon an ant-heap for the chance of a first view, and here was I engaged on a work of love for the public weal. I was the happy discoverer, and under * creditable circumstances.' As far as the eye could reach, without limit rippled the bright blue water. Up went n>j' old wide-awake, and I shouted for joy ; down went the old lady on her knees begging for dear life : she ^eared the hour of sacrifice had struck. The Kafirs who were with me looked astonished, and thought I had gone mad. ' What is it ; what is it, Tlaga ? ' ' The I -ake ! ' I replied. ' Where ? ' ' Here- under our feet — close by.' ' Why, that's only a chooi ! ' and so it was. The low sun cast a slanting beam over the incrustations of salt, and they looked like ripples indeed, a moment before I would have sworn it was water, 'i'he bush- woman showed us the usual spring by the side of the jjan, and we got water enough for the cattle ; she was bountifully rewarded, but she bolted during the night. As the waggons came up 1 watched to see if Livingstone would make the same mistake as I ; but one of the Kafirs had told him the story before, so he posed as Solomon 126 BIG GAME SHOOTING and I was chaffed. The I^ke was still 200 miles distant. These choois are remarkable features in South African lands. This one was fifteen miles long by, say, about four broad ; one to the immediate north was much larger. The wild animals visit them as ' licks,' and the Kafirs get their salt from them. In 1850 I hoped to bring a boat, but found it impos- sible to carry it through the drought and heat, and launch it in serviceable condition on the inland waters. The Doctor and I had arranged to start together, but he had already left Kolobeng a month when I arrived, Mrs. Livingstone with him. There was no chance of overtaking him this time, so I decided upon getting on to the Zouga, the river running out of Lake 'Ngami, and having a quiet shoot by myself. This was our second journey across the Bakalahari, and knowing the waters, we made our arrangements accordingly, crossed without much trouble, and reached our destination. Let me here record my gratitude for the nearly absolute perfection of the copper caps I used -Joyce's. I might very ungratefully have forgotten my debt but for a rather narrow escape on this journey from the only miss-fire I ever had in thousands of shots. In mid-desert, attracted perhaps by the water we had opened, a fine bull elephant came close to tjie waggons. I rode to meet him, and fired, but failed to do any serious damage, though he pulled up. I reloaded and manceuvred for his shoulder ; but before I could get a shot he charged, and the cap of the right barrel snicked— fortu- nately the left stopped him with the front shot, and he fell dead. I dismounted and then looked on the ground. I was amongst a nest of pitfalls — how the horse and the elephant had avoided them I don't know. On the Zouga the game was abundant, and the shooting, as it nearly always was, peerless. Eight or ten days from Lake Kaiuadou the camp had been made, 150 yards from the river, just outside the thick fringe of t;es, and all was quiet for the night ; even the dogs were sleeping, I believe, for once, for 1 had not been roused since ^ LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA 127 I turned in, when about midnight we were awakened sud- denly by a tremendous noise, higher up stream, coming towards us. Crashing trees and a general rushing were the only sounds we at first heard, but presently the screams and trumpetings of panic-stricken elephants mingled in the din. The herd came tearing and breaking its way through the dense jungle straight for us ; luckily they caught sight of the gleam of the fires and made a sharp bend to the left, but the outsiders were within a few yards of my waggon. On they passed into the darkness, and in five minutes all was again still. By coaxing and speaking to the horses, which were as usual tied two and two to the waggon-wheels, we calmed them down ; but every ox had broken his tethering riem^ for, as luck would have it, they were fastened to the trek-tow. The two teams with all the spare beasts had vanished no one knew whither, and five hours must pass before we could do anything to find out. Making the best of it I turned in again, and did not wake until the sun rose, when John, putting his head into the waggon, told me the oxen were on the flat, with a lion after them. I was up in a moment, and unslinging a gun from the side of the waggon tent, went in hot pursuit. Interrupted in his pastime, the would-be cattle-lifter turned quickly to bay, and as he gave me a fine open front shot at fifty yards, I fired for his chest ; but I had been after elephants the day before, and the heavy charges were still in the barrels. For accuracy at the distance I had too much powder by half, and the gun threw up, the ball striking his neck, anc! down he came on me with a grunting bark. I waited till he was within twenty yards and fired the second barrel, but it was a poor shot, the gun kicking violently, and it struck the upper part of the near foreleg. Two more bounds, snap went the bore, and pitching heavily forward he lay six yards from me. I liad run out in a hurry, and had neither powder nor ball. John and another man stood a short distance off. Keeping my full front to the lion and never taking my eyes off for a moment— a compliment he returned in kind — in an undertone I told one of the men to t^ BIG GAME SHOOTING go back for ammunition. He may have been away two or three minutes, but it seemed a long time. When he returned the difficulty was to get what he had brought to me. There were two or three small trees on the spot. I was standing beside one of them, and he managed somehow to climb into it, and, leaning forward from a bough, to put the powder and balls into my hand, which I held behind me. I began very cautiously to load, by feeling not by sight, for I knew I must keep my eyes fixed. Fortunately the balls went home easily, though every little push I had to give with the ramrod brought a twitch and a growl from my neighbour. At last all was finished except putting on the caps, but this was the crux. Directly I raised the gun to fix them the lion began to show signs of waking up in earnest. It was a touchy operation, and oh ! the relief when it was done ! The first shot rolled him over, and the second finished him. I had now time to look about me, and found the ground trampled by elephants into broad roads. Going back along the line of the stampede of the previous night, I met a poor little yearling calf elephant, torn badly by a lion, but still alive. I put it out of its misery. This was doubtless the cause of the last night's scare. After a cup of coffee and a damper I started on the tracks. The herd was of cows, but I was induced to follow it, as to my surprise there were two or three bulls consorting with them — a most unusual circum- stance, for as a rule they herd apart like stags. But there could be no mistake — there were the great tell-tale feet. The line of retreat kept widening from the numerous small parties that had joined the main body till at length it was two hundred yards broad, and I and John cantered merrily along it over the flat for ten miles, when we entered a dense belt of bush, into which we had not penetrated far when our progress was obstructed by a young bull with small tusks, who seemed inclined to make himself unpleasant. I did not want him and tried to drive him off, but he wouldn't go, and at last charged down on our horses. This was too much, and I shot him. < Si 6 o N H a -1 r LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA 129 We pressed on as quickly as possible to the open park-like country of which I could now and again get glimpses, fearing that the shot might have disturbed the rest of the herd if they were within hearing. But I need not have troubled myself, for as I got clear of the bush I came upori at least 400 elephants standing drowsily in the shade of the detached clumps of mimosa-trees.' Such a sight I had never seen before and never saw again. As far as the eye could reach, in a fairly opeii country, there was nothing but elephants. I do not mean in serried masses, but in small separate groups. Lying on the pony's neck I wormed in and out looking for the bulls whose spoor we had been following, and while doing so was charged by a very tall, long-legged, ugly beast, who would take no denial, and I was obliged to kill him. He was the bull, but, alas ! he was without tusk^•, and probably being defenceless had been driven from the bull herd and taken up \.ith the cows. I did not want any of them, and turned waggonwards, rather disappointed at not getting ivory, but well satisfied ,vith the sight my ride had given me. In the evening a straight-horned gemsbok {Oryx capensis) coming up from the river passed near the camp ; her horns struck me as unusually long, and with some of the dogs I gave chase on foot ; she moved very slowly, soon stood to bay, and dropped to the shot. She was evidently very old and worn out. I introduce her to air a theory. In many of the Bushman caves the head of the oryx is scratched in profile, and in that position one horn hides the other entirely. In Syria, even up to the present day, I am told, a very near relation of the Oryx axpensis i« found ; it is the habit of man in his hunting stage to try his hand at delineating the animals he lives upon. Probably the rocks or . caves of Syria may show, or formerly may have shown, glyphs * Here, again, my description must liavebcen defective, and Mr. Wolf iiad not then l)een introduced to Jumbo, or the forelegs of the elcjihants wcnild have been longer, the backs more sloping, the ears larger, and the facial angle less; but it is a beautiful piece of drawing and reproduces the surroundings and heated atmosphere most wonderfully. I. K I30 BIG GAME SHOOTING of the oryx reseml)Hng the work of the African Bushmen, and an early traveller may easily have taken them for representa- tions of an animal with one horn, and have started the idea of the unicorn, Biblical and heraldic. With regard to the former, the word in the Hebrew in our version rendered unicorn is ' reem ' ; vi some old English Bibles, indeed, ' reem ' has been preserved in the text untranslated. Again, I am told that the Syrian congener of the the Cape oryx is called by the Arabs of to-day ^^j ' reem.' ' Is it not likely then, that the Biblical Unicorn is the same as the 'reem' of the Arab? As an herrldic beast, the gemsbok lends himself most gallantly to the theory ; he is a strongly marked ec^-iine antelope, and is the one of his family that frecjuently lowers his head to show fight, it is said even with the lion — and this is confirmed in song, thougli he certu Jy got the worst of it in poetry, as I very much think he would in real life. The gemsbok is scarce, and hardly met with save in the barren open stretches of country like the Bakalahari desert; there were moie near the colony in my day than further in. He can do without water for a long tune certainly— indeed I believe iiliogether. He digs and eats watery roots sue"' as luhosl.e, a large tuber, and the l)itter desert gourd ; if rain falls, or he comes across water, he drinks, no doubt,, but he does not need it to support life. His country is also the strtjnghold of the Bushmen, who can, as I have said before, live for months, under the same conditions, but who generally ol)tain water by boring with a long pole tliroiigh the sand, in hi ows well known to them traditionally, down to the hard substratum. Eiilarging the bottom of the boring as much as they can, by working their pole on thj slant, and then tying a small ouncli of grass to a long reed and inserting it m the hole, they suck K\t the water. ' Siiici' wriiing lliu .ihovc I linil (hia subject has been discussed by the Iciirm-d, and a (l(!«:isioii nrrivt'tl al iiiiravounil)li! u> the oryx ; but I lot ruy r«. aiiuks Kland, fur 1 ilu not kimw lb:i( anyt'iiuf.; has been said en the i^lyphs in pro(il(.! theory ■ the idea was first started in luy iiimd by a coiivcrsalioii wilb ll»e sun ufa lati" Jisliop of Jervisali.'n\ HP mmmm L/iTER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA 131 These maminas, or sucking holes, are common throughout the desert, and wherever we found the reeds we found water ; in two instances, indeed, by digging to a depth of nine feet we were enabled to supply all our horses and oxen, for though the water never stood more than eight or ten inches, yet the oftener the well was emptied the quicker it filled again, obstructions to its free flow being removed by the continuous trickling. Mnnclcss lions I have mentioned how nuuh the elephants of the Zouga (lifTer from those of the Lim[)opo, and the more southern and eastern districts ; the lions too are, I suppose, influenced by the drier climate and surroundings, for very few of the males grow manes. I thought at first this might depend on their age. as the lion of the south is only furnished in this particular in full lionhood ; but one day whilst lying on the Zouga, a few days' march from Lake 'Ngami. a horse of mine fell into a pitfall, and in broad daylight three lions invited themselves K 3 m BIG GAME SHOOTING II ; to lunch. I was at the waggons, .nnd ran out with a trader of the name of Wilson to get a shot at them. They saw us, and, leaving the horse, got into cover ; as they had retreated very leisurely and were l^y no means scared, we took for granted they would come again. A low mound was within twenty yards of the pitfall, and gave an excellent standing place behind a double-stemmed tree. Wilson took the right, I the left, and from our slightly raised position wc commanded the only approach the lions could well return by. 1 can say that my eyes were never off that opening, and yet so ([uietly and glidingly did a lion fill it that I did not see him till he had come — the coming was a blank to :ne ; he was looking at me. A ball in the chest killed him. A second closed the gap, halted inquiringly by his companion, who was stretching in the death spasm, and raising his head caught sight of us. I covered him, but let Wilson firer -the ball raked him from chest to tail, and he dropped dead alongside his mate. After watching some time vainly for the third, we walked up to the carcases ; they were both males ; the one I hatl shot was the longest I ever killed, teeth, claws, skin, perfect, in his very jjrime ; the other the oldest, most worn-out specimen, no teeth, no claws, stumps only, his grizzled hide mangy and full of the scars of old wounds ; in fact, he was, as the Kafirs said, ' Ra le tao,' the father of lions. Neither had a sign of mane. A poor young fellow who had come out to shoot, but was utterly unfitted for the work, lost his companicin on one of the lower reaches of this river, near where we now were. From the natives' account, it appeared his friendhad fired at a goose, which fell in the river. He stripped to go in after it, though they begged him not, as there were alligators ; he would not listen to them and swam out. >\'hen two or three yards from the bird he was observed to strike sideways, as if he saw something, and in another instant rearing hnnself half out of the water, with a cry, he sank. There was no doubt what had happened. I first came across the former of these two travellers i i a pass not many days" trek from Kolobeng, Living- T LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA ^11 stone's station ; but the interview was a short one, as I was inspanned and on the move. Next morning I found all his men, they were Ba-Quaina and knew me, had followed my waggons, and upon my questioning them they said they really could not stay with that white man, as he starved them. They had found him elephants two or three times, but he never killed any ; he only rode after their tails, expecting them to fiill off. Of course I insisted on their going back, and shot a rhinoceros on their promise of doing so, just for the present distress. Here was a country swarming with animals, a man with guns and ammunition in abundance, and yet he couldn't ' keep his camp.' I would not blame him for that ; but why did he not give up ;it once when he discovered, as he must soon have done, his utter incapacity? My friend Vardon had interviewed him before he started, at the Cape, I afterwards leaint, and asked him what he had come out for. 'To shoot a lion,' he replied. Was that all ? ' he was asked ; and he replied, 'Yes ; if he did that he should be quite content.' 'You'd better have given 200/. and shot the one at the Zoo ; it would have been cheaper, less trouble, and less dangerous too.' Poor lad ! he picked up another mate and started on another journey, goodness knows what for ; and on my second return from the Zouga we found his .skull with a bullet-hole through it, and some small articles of dress, near an old camp- fire two or three marches only from where we first met. The hyainas had dragged away the rest of the bones. Rightly or wrongly, hisdeath was attributed to his comjianion, and strangely enough this man, subsetjuently joining himself to an expedition, met a similar fate himself. I never could get full particulars of this sad story. The way in which, according to the Kafirs, the native dogs worked the alligators on this narrow Zouga River amused ms. Three or four of them wished to cross, either for better fare, or to see their friends on the other side ; but, though alligator is very partial to dog, dog is not so fond of alligator. As- sembling on the banks, they would run, barking violently, a 134 BIG GAME SHOOTING I ! quarter of a mile up stream in full view ; halt ; join in a chorus of barking, yelping, and baying ; suddenly pull up in the middle of the concert, and dash at the top of their speed, absolutely mute, out of sight on a lower level, to the point they hf.d started from, jump into the water and swim across, selling the alligators, who, hungry after their 'course of bark,' were eagerly expecting their dinner at the spot where they had had the largest dose. Whether this was eyes or ears, or both, I could not make out. One beast has wits, another power ; and so the balance is pretty fairly kept. While still in the desert, during our first trip, Livingstone called my attention to a wonderful bit of instinct in a bird —he mentions it in his works, hni it is worth telling a second time. We had been a couple of days without water, and I was enjoying watching the cattle swell themselves out in a chance thunder-shower pond we had just come to, and sitting dabbling my feet, when to me the dear old 1 )octor, ' I say, what do you think is the greatest proof of conjugal affection you ever knew ? ' ' Go along, I'm not occupied with such matters.' * Don't be cross; come here. Do you see the chink in that tree, and that large horn-i)illed bird going backwards and forwards to it? What do you think he's doing?' 'Oh, making a fool of him- self generally.' ' No, he's feeding his wife and his children, who are shut in behind it.' And it was so. The ornithological name of the bird 1 don't know, but he's something between a toucan and a hornbill, neither one nor the other, about the size of a large pigeon, though, if 1 remember light, more Hke a woodpecker in build. After marriage the birds select a hole in a tree, and gather a few sticks for a nest ; the hen takes some feathers off her breast to line it and lays her eggs. When this is done, and incubation liegins, the male bird goes to the nearest pond, and brings wet clay, with which he sto|)s up the hole at which his wife went in, leaving one narrow opening in the centre, and through this the excellent fellow feeds mamma and liule ones, until the latter are fledged and ready to leave the nest, then he and she, from outside and in, jointly peck LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA 135 " away the clay, which has by this time under the dry heat become as hard as a brick, and madanie and her family make their dc/mt. The poor monsieur is a rickle of bones, madame as round as a ball ; the Kafirs, knowing this, always dig her out as a tit-bit whenever they find the nest. And what's it done for? An African wood is filled with all sorts of cats, and without a protection the toucan (that's not right, but let it stand) family would soon be improved off the earth, for a hole in a tree comes handy to a cat ; but the clay very soon gets too hard for his claws, and the bird hatches in security. Now come with me towards a Kafir kraal, such as those of the Ba- Quaina or Ba-Wangketsi, permanent tribes. We walk through the outskirts ; there's our friend the toucan again, but there's his wife too, and they keep alternately flying to and from that hole in the tree, out of which many gaping mouths are pro- truded at each visit. Tliey are the same birds, but the house- dOor is open. Within a radius of five to six miles of every large kraal no cat exists. The Kafirs kill everything that runs upon four legs for food or clothing, the best carosses are made of cat-skins (I have one with thirty-six pussies in it), and the birds have found this out — instinct ? or reason ? 1 wandered on at my leisure, and on my return from the higher reaches of the river unexpectedly came upon the waggons of Mr. Webb, of Newstead Abbey, and Captain Shelley, and a com- panion who, I l)elieve, was travelling with them and trading on his own account. We exchanged friendly greetings, they going towards the Lake, I homewards. I was returning earlier than need be, for I was very nearly run out of lead, and though I knew they were amply provided I had not the face to ask them for metal more valuable than gold in the middle of Africa. Next morning, however, I shot three elephants, and it occurred to me that I might exchange their tusks for lead with Mr. Webb's companion, and I accordingly sent John on horsel)ack with a note to Mr. Webb, asking him to mediate for me, and telling him John would put his Kafirs on our tracks from the elephants and they might run heel, and take the tusks out. 136 BIG GAME SHOOTING \\ John overtook them twehe or fifteen miles off, and came hack to camp with his horse laden with bars of lead and the prettiest and most courteous letter from Mr. Webb, who would not hear of my buying lead with ivory, and sent me a bountiful supply and a number of kind words. It was a most generous help, most graciously rendered, and enabled me to enjoy my homeward march. Without it I should have been troubled to feed my followers for 1,400 miles, for I had only a very small reserve. These were the only elephants I shot that were not eaten, and I hope some wandering Ikishman, vulture led, may have come across even them. I missed Livingstone. He was driven back by fever breaking out amongst his [)arty and returned on the other side of the river, to which I myself crossed over after a time, but he had then gone by. Inspanning one morning whilst here, a shout of 'Ingwe' from the men, a rush of the dogs, and up jumped a leopard in the midst of us, and made for a large tree, which he climbed. I was beneath it in a minute with a gun, and for half an hour with three or four men searched for him along the branches ^vithout avail. At last we gave it up, and went after the waggons, think- ing he must have managed to get away unseen by us. One man however stopped behind for a minute to tie up his bundle, and before we were a hundred yards off the cunning beast raised his head from a bough, came down, and made away too quickly for us to get back, on the man's halloo, in time to shoot him — he did wondrouslyin hiding himself Leopards were not com- mon thus far in ; they clung to the rocks and hills in and near the colony. I only saw four or five of them, but one performed a cleverish trick. The Kafirs were sitting round their fire under a large tree, when, climbing along an overhanging branch, he dropped into the circle, caught a dog, cleared the ring at a bound, and gt)t safely away. Towards the Colony, where the baboons are plentiful, the leo|)ard preys on them, though, when in large herds, the old dog baboons will frequently drive him off ; their canine teeth are formidable weapons. Most amusing LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRJCA 137 fellows are these noisy ancestors of ours, especially when feed- ing, spread about, picking up what they can find, lifting stones, and seizing anything that may be under them, and popping it into their cheek pouches with a smack. Three or four experi- enced veterans keep guard, to give warning of the approach of danger. They cannot forage for themselves, so they have an eye for the pouches of their brethren, and now and then make a spring, take a young fellow by the ear, and cuff him well, until he allows them to put their fingers into his pouch, and transfer its contents to their own. The hunting leopard, too, was seldom seen. I once roughly tested his tremendous speed. 1 was on horseback, and caught sight of one in such a posi- tion that he must pass close to me, if I could gain a point fifty yards off. To upset my plan he had a hundred and fifty yards to run, and he beat me hollow, though I went at a full gallop. The game was i)lentiful on this north side of the river, but the country in places was very ugly for hunting from the dense thickets. Lying lazily one day on a high bank of a beautiful reach, I was watching the otters below me as they paddled and fished down stream, when a troop of Bushmen from a neighbouring kraal came to the \vatering-i)lace, to fill their gourds and ostrich shells, before starting for the elephants I had killed the previous day, which were as usual some twelve or fifteen miles from camp, in a dry and thirsty land where no water was. After filling their vessels with a supply sufficient to last them for the two or three days it would take them to cut up and dry their meat, they proceeded to fill themselves -a most remarkable process ; each one, whether at the moment thirsty or not, pouring down a cargo of water to the utmost limit of his holding capacity, to economise the store he carried at his back. Like Mr. Weller at Stiggins' lea party, ' I could see them swelling wisibly before my very eyes," until their usually shrivelled bodies became shining and distended all over ; and man, woman and child waddled away — so many different sized water balloons. The last of the long line had disappearetl in 138 BIG GAME SHOOTING tht dense forest — my otters were all gone— the country was not a tempting one for hunting, the thorns by the river being almost impenetrable, and the jungle further off so matted and bound together with creepers and monkey-ropes that I had determined not to try it again. The noonday heat had stilled the earth of all distinguishable sounds, though the unbroken monotonous hum of insect life, the never-failing accompaniment of a piping hot day, seemed to fill and load the head and sultry air. I had nothing to watch, less to do, and was not sleepy ; the silence burdened me : and at length, to break it, I shouted to my after-rider, who was enjoying his siesta some distance off under the waggons, to saddle the horses, and tak- ing my gun, I mounted and rode along one of the narrow game tracks into the thicket, picking up a Bushman who had remained behind at the encampment. For some time the only living thing we saw was an old bull buffalo, which with lowered head seemed inclined to bar the road until, threatened by the Bush, man's spear, he sulkily withdrew. We had no need of him, and were content to let him go in peace. A shot would have dis- turbed the elephants we thought we might fall in with, for though we were not on a trail, the fresh footprints which were ever and again crossing the track, and the broken branches with the sap yet undried, told us they had been there very lately. Into the thorny barriers on either side of the way we could not have followed them with our horses, even had we wished, so we stuck to the path and kept our eyes open. Presently the ground to our right with its sea of thorns rose in a long low swell, and as it sank into the little hollow beyond, five or six colossal bodiless legs stood out amongst the bare lower stems of the closely woven branches. I slipped from my pony, and crawling on hands and knees, got within twenty yards of the legs, without being able to see anything more of the owners. A large tree was in advance, round who.se stem the thorns did not press quite so pertinaciously as elsewhere. Slowly and cautiously I gained its side. An elephant was close to me, but though I could now see his body he was stern on. LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA 139 I broke a twig to attract his attention ; his head swung half round, but was so guarded by the bush that it would have been useless to fire at it. His shoulder was more exposed. There was no time to wait, he was on the move, and the dust flew from his side as the heavy ball struck him. Screaming angrily, he turned full front in the direction of the tree by which I stood motionless. I do not think he made me out, and the bush was too thick for me to risk giving him further information by a second shot. For a moment we confronted one another : and then, the rumbling note of alarm uttered by his companions decided him on joining them, and the stiff thorns bent before the weight of seven or eight i)ulls, as a cornfield in the wind. I regained the path and rode along the line of their retreat, which, as shown by the yielding bush, was parallel to it. After a time the thorns thinned out, and I caught sight ot the wounded elephant holding a course of his own a little to the left of his fellows ; and when he entered the tropical forest beyond I was in his wake, and very soon compelled to follow where he broke away. Lying flat on my pony's neck and guiding him as I best might by occasional glimpses of the tail of my now slowly retreating pioneer, I laboured on in the hope that more open ground might enable me to get up along- side of him. A most unpleasant ride it was. My constrained position gave me but little chance of using my hands to save my head ; I was at one time nearly pulled from the saddle by the heavy boughs, and at another nearly torn to pieces by the wicked thorns of the ' wait-a-bit,' which, although no longer the tree of the jungle, were intolerably scattered through it. I have killed elephants on very bad ground, but this was the worst piece of bush I ever rode into in my life. A little extra noise from the pursuers caused the pursued to stop ; and whilst clinging like Gilpin to the calender's horse and peering at the broad stern of the chase, I saw him suddenly put his head where his tail ought to have been. The trunk was tightly coiled — an elephant nearly always coils his trunk in thick bush for fear of pricking it — forward flapped the huge ears. 140 BIG GAME SHOOTING up went the tail, and down he came like a gigantic bat, ten feet across. Pinned above and on either side, by dis- mounting I could neither hope to escape nor to kill my opponent. I therefore lugged my unfortunate animal round and urged him along ; but I had not taken into account with what great difficulties and how slowly I had followed the bull. He was now in full charge, and the small trees and bush gave way before him like reeds, whereas I was com- pelled to keep my head lowered as before and try and hold the path, such as it was, up which we had come. 1 was well mounted, and my spurs were sharp. Battered and torn by branch and thorn I managed a kind ol ^^allop, but it was impossible to keep it up. The elephant thundered straight through obstacles we were obliged to go round, and in fifty yards we were fast in a thick bush and he within fifteen of us. As a last chance I tried to get off, but in rolling round on my saddle my spur gored the pony's flank, and the elephant screaming over him at the same moment, he made a convulsive effort and freed himself, depositing me in a sitting position immediately in front of the u|)lifted forefoot of the charging bull. So near was it that 1 mechanically opened my knees to allow him to put it down, and, throwing myself back, crossed my hands upon my chest, obstinately puffing myself out with the idea of trying to resist the gigantic tread, or at all events of being as troublesome to crush as possible. I saw the burly brute from chest to tail as he passed directly over me lengthways, one foot between my knees, and one fourteen inches beyond my head, and not a graze I Five tons at least ! As he turned from chasing the pony which, without my weight and left to its own instinct, escaped easily to my after-rider's horse — he swept by me on his way to rejoin his companions, and I got another snap shot at his shoulders. As soon as 1 could I followed his spoor, but must have changed it in the thick bush, for in five minutes I had run into and killed a fresh ele[)hant in a small open space. The Hushmen found the first, next morning, dead. < ta M J 3 'J 7i H A .,'f ■ LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA 141 Out of all my narrow escapes this is the only one that remained with me in recollection for any time. On four or five other occasions I was half or wholly stunned, and therefore not very clear about my sensations ; bui on this I was well aware of what was going on and over me. One hears of night- mares — well, for a month or more I dare say, 1 had night- elephants. My reader will he glad to know that this is the last mishap I am going to tell him of, and that my contribution to the Big (lame of Africa is nnished. I beg his pardon for not making it more interesting, but I began a new trade too late in life. At starting I only proposed to give the stories of the illustra- tions ; this I have done as well as I am able, but I have coupled them together with remarks not strictly within the subject of ' Big Game,' because in writing of African animals I could not cjuite get rid of African surroundings ; and, besides, entirely by themselves they looked too bare. I hope I may be excused, therefore, for going a little beyond the limits pre- scribed for this ' accidental ' sketch. X42 BIG GAME SHOOTING ' CHAPTER \' WITH I,. 'INGSTONE IN SOUTH AlKICA Bv W. CoTTt^N ()s',vi;i,i. [The Editors are fully ;)vv;ire that ih' following; cannot be con- sidered as coming strictly under the head 'if Hig (ianio Shooting. It is, however, the speci.il wish of the late Mr. Oswell's family that the whole MS. should appear as he left it, and the Editors willingly comply with the request. — Ed.] A FEW lines about iny com[>anion in my Zamhesi journey. The desrriinion of the route taken may be found in his book, and of the man lun<:>elf two I,i\es juive been written. }Uit ! knew him weV. personally, and there was one trait in his cha- racter which, W(judia\ has never been made enough of— a kmd of firm persistence to do whatever he had set his mind on. In an Kngli.'h'nan we might, 1 think, have called the j)hase obstinacy, but with Liv .gstone it was 'Scottishness.' It was not the sic volo sic jii/n-o style of imperiousness, but a quiet determination to carry out his own views in his own way, without feeling himself bound to give ony reason or expla- nation further than that he intended bstinate, but we generally agreed to differ, and in all n.atters concerning the natives, I, of course, waived my c rude opinions to his matured judgment. I had the management of trekking and the cattle, after he, with his great knowledge of the people and their language, had obtained all the infor- mation he could about the waters and the distances between them. This worked >vell. \\'hen we reached the Chobe River, Sebitoani was on an island thirty miles down stream, but sent his own canoe with twelve paddlers to bring us to him. It was a pleasant trip, the men going with the current about eight miles an hour. At three in the afternoon we reached our destination and landed. Presently this reallv great chief and man came to meet us, shy and ill at ease. W\' held out our hands in the accustomed way ot true Britons, and I was surprised to see that his mother-wit gave him immediate insight mto what was expected of him, and the friendly meaning of our salutation ; though he could never ha\e witnessed it bef()re, he at once followed suit and placed his hand in ours as if to the manner born. I felt troubled at the evident nervt)usnessof the famous warrior, for he hail been, and still.was, a luigiuy fighter, witii \ery remarkable force of 144 lUG GAME SHOOTING character. Surrounded by his trihesinen, he stood irresoKite and (juite overcome in the presence of two ordinary-looking Euro|)cans. Livingstone entered at once into conversation with him, and by degrees i)arily reassured him ; but throughout that day and the next, a sad, half-s( arcd look never faded from his face. He had wished us to visit him, had sent an am- bassage to Livingstone at Kolobeng, l)ut the reality of our coming, with all its possibilities, dangers, and advantages seemed to (lit through the man's mind as in a vision. He killed an o\ for us, and treated us right royally ; he was far and away the finest Kafir I ever saw in mien and manner. He had been told that Livingstone a:. u I occasionally wrote a letter to one another, if by chance we were separated for a day or two and wished to communicate or arrange a meeting at a certair. point, and asked us if his information were true that we could make one nnother hear when far apart, and if we could give him an example of our power. Livingstone took a man out of even Katir earshot, four or five hundred yards away, and then whisjjeringly asked him his own and his wife's nauK, .\\\(\, writing them on a scrap of paper sent him to me. ' Well. Kachobe, and how is .Scboni your wife?' I asked. The chief and his headmen, wh(3 were gathered ex[)ectant round, were ama/ed and somewhat frightenetl, taking it for magic, though they soon ^Tot over it. It does not do to introduce Kafirs too suddenly to the common things of civilised life. I on(X' lost an admiring audience by an act of this kind. A laughing circle was round me, and I was dispensing l)eads, brass wire, and tiny locking glasses to ingratiate myself with a new tribe, the Mac«:)ba, when by way of amusing them I took a burning-glass from my pocket and ignited a pinch of gun])owder strewed on the waggon-box, telling them >viiat I was g(jing to tlo, and prei)aring them for it. With the puff, man, woman, and child vanislvd ; it was days before 1 could regain their confidence, and throughout my stay with them I was looked upon with awe as the wizard of the sun. , i WITH LIVIMGSTOXE JN SOUTH AFRICA 145 Sebitoaiii had allotted to us a bright clean kotla for eating and sleeping in, and after su|)per we lay down on the grass, which had been cut for our beds by thf thoughtful attention of the chief In the dead of the night he paid us a visit alone, and sat down very cjuietly and mournfully at our fire. Living- stone and I woke up and greeted him, and th.en he dreamiiy recounted the history of his life, his wars, escapes, successes and conquests, and the far-distant wandering in his raids. By the fire's glow and flicker among the reeds, with that tall dark earnest speaker and his keenly attentive listeners, it has always appeared to vne one of the most weird scenes I ever saw. ^\'ith subdued manner and voice Sebitoani went on through the livelong night till near the dawn, his low tones only occa- sionally interrupted by an inquiry from Livingstone. He de- scribed the way in which he had circumvented a strong ' impi ' of Matabili on the raid, and raised his voice for a minute or two as he recounted how, hearing of their approach, he had sent men to meet the dreaded warriors of 'Umsilegas, feigning them- selves traitors to him in order to lure them to destnu tion by promising to guide them to the bulk of the cows and oxen which they said, in fear of their coming, had been placed in fancied security on one of the large islands of tlie Chobe ; how the Zulus fell into the trap, and allc-wetl themselves to be ferried over in three or four canoes hidden there for the purpose, and how when the last trip had been made the boatmen, pulling out into midstream, tokl them they could remain where they were till they were feti iied ofl", and in the meantime might search for the cattle ; how, after leaving them till they were worn and weak with hunger, for there was nulling to eat on the island, he pa.ised over, killed the chiefs, and absorbed the soldiers into his own ranks, providing them with wives, a luxury they were not entitled to under Zulu military law until their spears had been well reddened in fight. Then he waved his hand westwards, and opened out a stor*' of men over whom he had gained an easy triumph ' away away very far by the bitter waters,' and to whom, when they asked for food, wishing to bind them with fetters of I. I, na ■ 146 BJG CAME S/i'OOTING kindness, he sent a fat ox, and, "'Would you believe it? they returned it, saying they didn't eat ox.' " Then what do you eatr" I asked; " 7£;if like beef btttor than anything." "We eat ;//^//,'' said they. 1 had never heard of this beibre. V>\M they were very pressing, so at last I sent them two slaves of Macobas —the river people — who, as you know, are very dark in colour, but they i)rought them back, saying they did not like hlark men, but preferred the redder variety, and as that meant sending my own fighting men, I told them they mrjM go without altogether.' This was the only intimation we ever had that cannibalism existed in our part of Africa. This chief afterwards died close to our waggons from pneu- monia set up by the irritation of some old spear wounds in his chest. He was beloved by the Mnkololo, was the fastest runner and best fighter among them ; just, though stern, with wonder- ful power of attaching men to him. He was a gentleman in thought and manner, well disi)osed to Eurojieans, and very proud of their visiting him. Had he not died ho might h;)ve been of the greatest use in civilising and missionary work- His kingdom has, I am afraid, melted away. 'I'he scei)tre de- scended to his daughter, who thought. ;is man took a plurality of wives, a (lueeii might allow herself like liberty in the wa\ of husbands, dickering and strife arose, and though the rule went to her brother after her resignation, he was not of the same calibre as his father, and disintegration of the iieterogenc- ous elements of the carefulh put together and wisely ruled kingdom soon set in. The -uition lost its unity, and resolved itself into its separate nationalities in the nnirse, T believe, of a very few years. Such has been the fare v)f all African kingdoms ; one great man has made anil h< d iheiii togethet. .'nd at his death they havereti mi-d t<; the >evoral pett\' tribal royalties out of whit^h they were wilded. And now, ha\ing hatl my say on 1'.;^ vlame. one word on the 'biggest beasts " of Africa- the slave traders and one on the country, and 1 have done. It was on the Chobe that we first came across the slaver's w«>rk. \\'e had travelled ail night WITH UVIXGSTONE IN SOUTH AFRICA 147 throiu^h the slcepinj^ flies. I was in advance with the gun and half a dozen Kafirs with axes, with which they had been clearing the way. In the very early morning we reached the river, nar- row, but deep, with stet;p banks. I asked the guide if we could cross it. ' Do they swim?' he asked, pointing to the waggons. ' No,' I answered ; ' where's t'e ford ? ' There was none, he said. * Are there ts(?tse here?' I incpiired, and he replied that there were plenty. 'What are we to do .vith the animals?' and he told me to drive them as near as possible to the water, into the reeds, as the flies were not there, only in the bush. The pests were beginning to buzz about as the sun rose, so we t»)ok the man's advice, and while the others lay down for a rest of an hour or two I volunteered to keep watch. Putting my back against a tree, I kept my eyes steadfastly fixed on my charire for a time, and then I suppose I must have closed them, though (»f course I should deny tliat I was asleep. Suddenly 1 was roused from my reverie by a salutation in Sechuana ' Kumehi.' I looked up, and before me stood a tall stalwart Kalir, clothed ni a larly's dressing-gown. It came scantily to his knee, and m other i)arts :^eemed hardly to have been made for him, and his appearamre was so queer that I burst into a laugh. I saw the blood rise in his dusky face as hv asked wh;u 1 was laughing at. ' W ny, you have got on a woman's dress from my country,' 1 told him. ' I don't know about thit,' he said, ' but I gave a woman for it last year.' We had come imaware upon the southern limit of the sla\e trade. It was months since we had last seen any products of European manufacture oxce|)t those we had brought with us, and here the\ were in iS' S. l.at., in the middle of South .Africa, i,i;oo to i,Soo miles froHfriny sea. l,i\ingstone woke up, smoothed down my visitor, and impiired what we could i\o with the cattle. \Nc could not leave them where ihey were ; they would inul nothing to eat, and besides, when the sun got hot the flies would find th\ n way to them. We must dri\e them at^ross" the river, as there were no tsetse there, the m;m told US i anii %v fcHi®d it was so, thv' narrowest liuv* faquently I. a mmmmm 148 L'/C7 GAME SHOOTING defining the limits of safety and danger. Nothing, however, would persuade them to take the jump from the bank into the deep black water. Our friend whistled, and from the fringe of reeds on the opposite side four or five canoes full of men shot across the narrow channel. As they landed they presented the most motley appearance. They had evidently dressed to astonish us, and each bore about his neck or shoulders some article of European manufacture. Here was a fellow with a yard and a half of green baize or red diugget tied with a leathern thong about his throat, the ends streaming away behind him ; another with a yard or two of sonic cheap gaudy cloth with a hole cut in the middle, wearing it a la poncho ; two yards of calico of the commonest adorned the person of a third ; it was a most ridiculous sight, but was evidently considered most impressively overwhelming. Still the cattle resisted our united eflForts. At last, a canoe was paddled over to the other side, and in three or four minutes appeared again with a tiny cow and a most diminutive calf as passengers. The little cow was lifted on to the bank, and tne canoe paddled back with the calf , we got our oxen as much together in a lump as we could, close to the river, surrounded them oi^ three sides, loosed the lowing little mother, who insta;itl\ took a header into the water, and then by shoutmg, jjushing, and twisting tails induced our oxen to follow the example set them, and they were safe. The horses gave no trouble. On '[ucslioning these Kafirs and their chief (Sebitoai\iy afterwards as to the mystery of the fme clotht.'s, this was the interi)retation. ' I )o you see that little hill ? A number of men with hair like yours and with guns came from the eastwards ami sat down on that hill. We sent to ask them what they ',>anted, and they said "to buy men." A\'e explained we had none to- sell ; it was the first time they liad e\er come to us, though we had heard of them before. \\'ouldn't they buy ivory or ostrich feathers ? No, they didn't want anything of that sort; they had beautiful cloths, which they showed us'.' *I told them,' said Sebitoani, 'that I thought it was an "ugly" thing. WITH LIVINGSTONE IN SOUTH AFRICA 149 to sell men, but they sat there day after day, and showed us fresh cloths so beautiful that you would have sold your grand- mother for them. 'J'hen I somehow remembered there were men whom we had taken in our last raid. And I at length consented to part with them. Hut they were not many, and they wanted more. I said 1 had none ; if I sold now it must be my own people, and I would not do that. Then they asked, " I )on't you want oxen ? " What could I say -doesn't a chief always want oxen ? " Well, as we came here, about five days off we passed through a country where the oxen were like the grass for number. I ,ond us 400 or 500 of your warriors, and we will help with our guns, and let us attack that tribe. \Ve will take the men and women, and you shall take the oxen." What could I say? This appeared a very good plan to me, so we attacked. They got two great tens (200) of men and women, and I got all those caltk/ pointing to a plain on which ii herd of these diminutive little creatures were feeding. I for- get whether Livingstone described them, but they were most • remarkably small things, like sturdy I )urham oxen three feet high. There was not the least difficulty in carrying them about Ixxlily ; we put one into a waggon, hoi)ing to bring it out, but it died. Pretty little gentle beasts, I wish I had taken more trouble to secure specimens. Wh>.'n the men milked them they held them by the hind leg as you would a goat. On the other hanil, by the shores of Lake 'Ngami. a gigantic long-horned breed is found, stolen in a raid from the Ma-Wangketsi thirty years before our visit. 'I'hey were original. y remarkable for their heads, but in four or five generations, from feeding on the silicious coated reetls and succulent grasses near the lake, had developed wonderfully in horns and height. 'I'hrough Living- stone 1 obtained one 6 ft. 2 in. high, with horns measuring fron^ tip to tip 8 ft. 7 in. and 14 ft. 2 in. round from one point to the other taking in the base of the skull. \Ve had hort, and his horns coming to the ground before his nose, prevented him feeding. I was obliged to shoot him, and his head now hangs over the sideboard in my dining-room. These slave-dealers, with their devilish counsels and temp- tations, were Mambari, a kind of half-caste Portuguese, who fifty years ago were agents for the export slave-trade. A\'hen the survivors of the gangs reached the coast they were packed away in a slave-ship, like herrings in a cask, and transported. Through the vigilance of English cruisers this iniquitous traffic has been greatly reduced, and, but for the refusal of the right of search by the French, would be very small and unremunerative ; but the Arab curse still continues, and though, now that the sea- board is partially occupied by Europeans, greater difficulty will be placed in its way, I am of opmion that through the avarice and cupidity of man -African and European it will not entirely disappear so long as there is any ivory left. That once exhausted, is there anything else worth bringing a ten- mile journey to the coast? In the late very cool partitioning of Africa we may con- gratulate ourselves in having obtained possession of Mashona- land, a district healthy enough for colonisation, and apparently rich enough to repay it. The tsetse, that great enemy to the cattle-breeder, will disappear before the approach of civilisa- tion, and the killing off of the game, especially the buffalo, its stanJing dish, as it has done many times already in African lore. I am speaking of the tracts south of the Zambesi. Of tropical lands to the north T know nothing, save from what I read and am told, and I cannot yet see how tiiey are to be settled, l^'ever and general unhealthiness must weight immi- gration heavily, and even if the c:ountry is capable of supplying the needs of the world in the future, what i)hiianthropic society will subsidise the workers until the industries are developed ? It must be remembered the greatest projihylactics in an evil climate are movement, and its conseciueni excitement, and change of scene — the settler dies where the traveller lives. 'Hie rail- ■■■i WITH LIVlNGSrONK IX SOUTH AFRICA ^51 way, if made, will help to supjjress slavery, by giving carriage for the ivory, its only cause at i)resent — no ivory, no slavery. May the venture turn out better than many another has done, and not end in that very questionable blessing, a rum- civilisation 1 The influx of ii"^migrants into Mashonaland will, in time, with the gold and diamond seeking population further south, tend to minimise the power of the Hoers over the native tribes. Dutchmen are slow colonists, and will not be able to hold their own with the incomers in enterprise, or in a few years in numbers or power, and the evil influence and oppression they have at times exercised upon the black race will be at an end. I hope no worse regime may come in with the new rule. There were many good points in the Dutch farmers, and I think they compare very favourably with English squatters in other lands. Where antagonistic races are brought together, the minority, the whites, if they are to hold their ground, are almost inevitably forced for very existence to terrorise the black majority that would otherwise overwhelm them. I am not arguing that their conduct is moral or legal, but it has been, and will continue to be, the rule where whites settle in black men's lands uninvited. U'e may hold \\\) our hands in a Pharisaical way, and when we are once secure, I grant we try to improve our subjects ; but they must be our subjects first. Hut would Englishmen under similar conditions have done much better than the Dutchmen? 1 think not. Without the pale of law, tliey would h.jrdly have been so much of a law unto themselves. No doubt the Boers have many faults, and with resped to the native races have shown great cruelty my con- tention is they could hardly have held their own without. NN'e must not be too hard on ihem because they have twice got the better of us in the Held, and twice in diplomacy. English- meii have not forgotten Laings Nek and ttie Majul)a Hills. |)il)lomatically, too, we were twice worsted : the Boers had very troublesome neighbours, and sought the suzerainty of our Queen for their own ends, not by a unaninfous vote I know ; but J,Ai-H^,-„ J„J «??n'TS???Se3XBgBX?89K9C9BS9 153 BIG GAME SHOOTING there are ' oppositions ' everywhere, and at all events the seekers were the majority. The troublesome neighl)ours, now we are masters, call upon us to rectify the frontier line, which had been greatly encroached upon by the Hocrs. We refuse, or delay, to set matters right. Boers' troublesome neighbours become ours. The Zulus are conquered with soiro difficulty, and the Boers, relieved from their anxieties, demand and obtain the withdrawal of the suzerainty. This is not my opinion alone. The Zulus were our fast friends till we refused to undo the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the Dutchmen the whole story, including the subsecjuent withdrawal of our troops, is a page that one would like to tear out of our annals. The character of the country in its different stages is well given in the illustrations. There are no striking features ; no mountains, no large river, except the Zambesi, and only one rather uninteresting lake, 'Ngami ; no great forests, no tropical vegetation ; the rains are scanty, the soil dry, the plains large. What you see one day you may see for a week. In most countries you would have to describe nature in her many phases, but in South Africa one might take a paint-brush and give a broad, general idea of the land, with four or five streaks of colou — the widely extending, ascending, nearly treeless flats from Kuruman to the Molopo River ; the broken, fairly clothed region of the liakatla ; and the open park-like scenery between them and the rocky homes of the Bakaaand Ba-Mung- wato. Throughout this area the prevailing trees are mimosas ; the flowers are of the same genera and orders, undisturbed by man — sheets of different kinds are often spread out side by side> parterre fashion, in se[)arate beds, not mingling even at the edges. They have fought the battle out amongst themselves, and it has (Mided in the survival of the fittest, aliens less suited to the particular border being crowded out by the stronger natives. From the Ba-Mungwato, however, as you dive into the Kalahari desert by the Bushmen sucking-holes of 'Serotli, thirty yards of sand suffice to change the growth and famili'^s of trees and flowers. On the side we struck the hollo\t, they WITH L1VINL.ST0NE Ii\ SOUTH AFRICA 153 were old friends : on the other, entire strangers — not even recog- nised by the Kafirs who had accompanied us from the south. We had turned over a fresh leaf in Nature's book, and it lasted us until the sluggish waters of the Zouga River and Lake Kamadou came in sight, with their lonely palm-trees, and, on the upper reaches of the river, unusually thick bush. Vou thence passed through a country cut up with narrow sleepy streams, or by the dry barren road, eastward of Lake Kamadou, to the open flats of the Zambesi, the approach froin the side of the Chobe being studded with euphorbia-trees, quaint of growth, and excellently named candelabra. Throughout these parts you hardly see a hillock ; so rare, indeed, is the sight, that one tiny, isolated mound is named ' Sisalebue ' ' we are still looking at you'- by the Kafirs, in recognition of the scarcity of even such haycocks. IJeyond the Zouga the wonderful abundance of animal life is not maintained. There is game, but not Jn large herds. The happy hunting grounds in my time began at the .Molcpo and ended at the Zouga. Throughout South .\frica the sparseness of the population has favoured the increase of the game, coupled with the fact that the people were not adecjuately armed for its destruction. The massing of animals in particular localities, dependent on the waters, which are few and far between, may perhaps have led to an exaggerated idea of the sum total ; but put it as you will, after all real and imaginary detluctions from whatsoever cause, there never was a land so full of wild lite since ante- diluvian days. It will die out before guns and civilisation, and that quickly, though the fly may bar the way to mounted sportsmen, f.r ;'n reare no dense jungles or inaccessible ranges of mountain ff^r iie beasts to fall back ujwn. O O IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) ^ // A fc ^ = I I.I 11.25 12.5 2.2 i;^ illlM 1.4 IS. V] vg 7 c^ c^l /^ V mnsL Sciences Corporation ^3 WIST MAIN STRUT WEBSTER, NY. 14S80 (716) 873-4503 <> ^ A i°^tf ^^ A tmmmm Dciul l)iittiil() chapt1':r \i « ' EAST Al'RICA--l!ArTKKV, DRESS, CAMP CEAK AND STORKS 13v V. J. Jackson The pursuit of big game in the Africa of fifty years ago lias already been graphically described in the foregoing pages by the late Nfr. ^\'. C. Oswell ; but, as the eciitor of these volumes considers that something ought to bi- written here of more modern sport in that countr)', and as the style of hunting has altered somewhat since my collaborator's time, I have accei»ted an invitation to describe I'last African s[)ort as it is to-day, and to furnish such advic e and guidance as may prove serviceable to others contemplating a shooting ex])edition lo my old hunt- ing grounds. The nature of the big game in I'-ast Africa can have altered little, cxcei)t in those i)arts of the coimtry which have, within "PWP EAST AFRICA 155 I ' the last few years, been visited by luiropeaii sportsmen. In these places, particularly in the district round Kilimanjaro, and in the vicinity of well-beaten caravan routes to the interior, the game has naturally become more cunning and more diffi- cult to approach than it used to be. Little or nothing has ever been done or can be done in East Africa without patience and perseverance, and perhaps the pursuit of big game in that country will test these virtues more than anything else. Dis- appointments in such a country are, of course, numerous, and some of them are unavoidable, but there are others which might be avoided by the exercise of a little patience and knowledge. First among the matters requiring the sportman's conside- ration is his battery. Without entering into the details of the merits and demerits of the different rifles and their respective charges, about which so much has been written, I strongly recommend sportsmen intending to visit East Africa to arm themselves on the principle that a big beast, and more particularly a dangerous one, requires a heavy bullet, and the great shock such a bullet gives to the system, to disable or kill it, and not to allow them- selves to be carried away with the idea that a "450 F.xpress bullet is good enough for anything. There is no doubt what- ever that the very largest and t0ughe.1t of game can be killed by a "450 or -500 Express, and there are several well-known and very experienced sportsmen who use nothing else, but as it is more than probable that the majority of those men who use, and advocate the use of, small rilles for all kinds of big game used heavy rifles when they first began, and while learn- ing by experience what they now know of the habits of the beasts, their anatomy, and their most vital spots, I should reconmieiul beginners to use what these experienced hunters began with, i.e. heavy rilles for big game. 'This chapter is >vritten more i)articularly for sportsmen who, though they may be excellent shots, and possessed of good nerve under ordinary circumstances in the oi)en, have had little or no experience with big and dangerous game. Approaching a beast which is IP «p 156 BIG GAME SHOOTIXG quite unconscious of the stalker's presence, even out in the open where there is little covert, although exciting and often rather difficult work, is rarely, if ever, dangerous ; but follow- ing the blood spoor of a wounded buffalo, rhinoceros, or elephant into places where there is little chance of seeing the beast excepting at close quarters is quite another thing ; and it is possible that a man might lose his nerve or become unsteady through over-excitement when the result of a badly placed small-bore bullet might end in disaster. The use of heavy rifles, however, reduces to a minimum the danger of following up such dangerous game into thick bush or long tangled grass. A large-bore spherical bullet driven by plenty of powder, even if it should not strike a vital spot (owing perhaps to the position of the beast when fired at, or to the stalker being unable in the thick covert to make out what part of the animal he is aiming at), will inflict such a tremendous shock upon the system that the creature is far less likely to charge than when hit with a small bullet. A big bullet might knock the beast down, and would also knock out of him any inclination he miglit have to charge, whereas a small bullet under the same conditions would have little chance of knocking him down, but would only inflict further pain and increase his inclination to charge. The following is the battery used by myself, and it is one which I have found satisfactory : — A single 4-bore rifle, weighing 21 lbs., sighted for 50, 100, and 1 50 yards, shooting 1 2 drums of powder and a spherical bullet. A double 8-bore rifle, weighing 15 lbs., sighted for 100 and 200 yards, shooting 12 drams of [)ow(ler and a spherical bullet. A double '500 l<>xpress, sighted for 100 and 200 yards, bored for long bottle-shaped cases, ' Magnum,' shooting 6 drams of powder and long bullets of three kinils — solid, smail-holc, and copper-tube. A 1 2-bore shot-gun. To the above were added a single -450 I'^xpress with telc- I ' MMHiPaiW EAST AFRICA 157 scope sight up to 300 yards for long shots when game was wild ; a -44 Winchester carbine, a wonderfully accurate and first-rate little weapon for Gaze/la Thomsoni and such small game; a -295 rook rifle; and a 12-bore Paradox by Messrs. Holland. This is an admirable weapon, and cannot be too highly recommended for shooting in bush where game is gene- rally to be seen within 100 yards, though it rarely offers more than a snap shot. A Paradox is particularly useful should the sportsman's dinner depend on a snap shot at an antelope, guinea-fowl, or francolin. In a country where transport is diffi- cult to obtain and also expensive, and where every cartridge is important and has to be considered, it would be as well to take a 20-bore Paradox instead of a 12-bore. . Moreover, for a weapon that would rarely be out of the hand (except when stalking or following up a wounded beast), its lightness, especially on the march or when returning to camp dead beat after a good hard day, would be a great advantage. Many is the time I have longed for such a handy little weapon. A very favourite battery amongst sportsmen, and one which many recommend, is as follows : - A double 8-l)ore rifle. A double -577 Impress rifle. A double -450 Ivxpress rifle. A double 2o-b()re shot-gun. If, hov/ever, I were asked to recommend a first-rate battery for East Africa, I should say : — A single 4-bore rifle, as above, with only one sight too yards. A double 8-bore, as above, with only one sight 100 yards. A double -500 loth are very strong, and wear well. I re- commend the coat to be made Norfolk jacket fashion, loose and roomy about the chest and sh(nilders, but fitting fairly close at the waist. There should be one pocket let in on the left breast, but on no account should there be one of any kind EAST AFRICA 159 on the right hroast, as it would often interfere with getting the rifle or gun quickly up to the shoulder. The two pockets, one on each hip, should be fairly large and roomy, and shoulcl have a good deep flap to keep wet and dirt out. 'i'he flap should be made to button, to prevent cartridges, &c., from jumping out when running ; it should, however, be made to button and un- button very easily. It is a good thing to have six loops (made on the same princij)le as a cartridge belt, but of the same material as the coat), sewn to the left breast, and six or eight on to the right side, for the cartridges of the two Express rifles most in use. The loops on the left breast should be about on a level with the first button, if the coat is worn with an open V front, or the second button if worn tunic f;^shion, to button up at the throat ; the loops on the right side should be just above the l)elt. They are a great convenience, as, if properly made, the cartridges never shake out, and are far handier than when carried in the [)ocket, and the stalker is much more independent of his gun-bearers who carry spare ammunition. The under part of the sleeve, from above the elbow to the wrist, should be covered with some kind of soft leather, as a protection against thorns, (S:c., when crawling up to game. The shoulders should also be protected by leather pads. Knickerbocker breeches made with plenty of room above the knees are perhaps more comfort- able than anything else. They should be fiiced with soft leather, extending from the knee to half-way up the thigh, and from the inside to the outside seam, with an extra thickness just over the knee-cap. It is a good plan to have a small pocket between each pair of the front brace buttons to carry a watch and compass in. These should i)e made waterproof, to prevent perspiration injuring their contents. I'Acellent clothes can i)e had either at Mombasa or Zanzibar, anil are far cheaper than at home. It is as well, however, to have one suit made in England, as a pattern, for the ( loanese tailors are poor hands at making from measurements, though they can turn out first-rate work from a pattern. All under-garments should be of flannel, a mixture of flannel and cotton, or flannel and silk. Woollen stockings l6o /.'/(; GAME SHOOTING should 1)0 thick, as they not only protect the feet from the burning heat, but also prevent them from blistering. Merino socks are very pleasant for camp, but are too thin for marching, and soon wear out. Boots and shoes should l)e of brown leather, as it is much cooler than black, and I find that shoes worn with leggings with ' spat ' feet are undoubtedly cooler than boots. Leggings of soft sheepskin, or so-called vSambur leather, are excellent, and as they can ))e made to fit close to the leg, they afford almost as much support as the Indian ' putti.' They have one disadvantage, however, as Sambur leather soaks up and holds water more than other leather. All boots and shoes should have the soles well studded with nails, of which an extra supply should be taken, as walking in dry grass very soon polishes the soles, and slipping about, disagreeable at any time, becomes very exhausting after a long day. In the matter of headgear, EUwood's patent Shikar hat of felt and brown canvas is excellent when the sun is very powerful ; it will stand any amount of rough usage, and has the advantage of being waterproof. A solar ' topee,' whether helmet or mushroom shape, is much too conspicuous ; is apt to be dragged off the head when passing through thorny bush ; tears and breaks v^ry easily : and after a downpour of rain soon becomes reduced to a heavy shapeless pulp. A parson's felt wideawake, covered with the same material as the shooting suit, is capital for stalk- ing in, as the lirim is just wide enough to protect the i)ack of the neck when crawling up to game, and is not so large as to be conspicuous. . A waterproof of material s[)ecially made for the tropics is indispensable. A very convenient shape with kilt and cape, known as the * Payne-(lallwey,'is made by Messrs. Cording, of Air Street ; but for Africa I prefer a short coat with a cape sufficiently Mng to keep a rifle dry when tucked under the arm to a cape only. The kilt to protect the legs should reach well below the knees. The advantage of this combination is that after a heavy shower of rain the legs are still protected from the wet grass, while the coat can be dispensed with, as it is EAST AFRICA \(n very hot and uncomfortable work walking in a waterproof in the tropics. An ulster, or warm dressing-gown, should also he taken for camp use, and a thick boating sweater is invalu- able in cold or damp weather. CAM I' CKAK In regard to camp gear, a thing of vital importance, a lew hints may prove useful. Comfort in camp should be one of the first considerations. Some men incur risks unnecessarily, through ignorance of the dangers they are runnmg, having probably read that men in South Africa sleep out in the open with impunity, or with nothing but a 'lean-to' of sticks and grass as a protection against dew, wind, or rain, and a bundle of grass and a blanket to lie upon ; but men cannot do this in East Africa, and I recommend them not to try. The heavy dews and the sudden changes of temperature during the night are two of the chief things to be guarded against, and it is well never to disregard them. A tent is indispensable. A capital one, known as the * Wissmann,' can be had from Edgington, of 2 Duke Street, London Bridge. His damp and insect proof canvas is excellent, and wet increases its weight very little. This tent, which is 7 ft. by 7 ft., is a very comfort- able size for one man, and packs into two loads. The outside fly, however, should be 3 ft. longer on each side of the ridge-pole, and should nearly touch the ground. If this is done the tent is much more likely to stand firm in a gale of wind, and the space underneath affords plenty of room for private gear, and also a cai)ital slee[)ing-place for the tent boy, provided iie does not snore. The poles, excei)ting the ridge-poles, should be solid, and made of deal, which is fairly light ; female bamboo cracks and breaks when the tent ropes shrink through getting wet, and male bamboo is heavy and difficult to obtain in England. Indian-made tents are not to be recommended for Africa ; they are essentially for hot and dry weather. They absorb dami), and increase tremendously in weight in wet I. M l63 BIG GAME SHOOTING weather ; tear more easily in transport through bush ; rot sooner than Enghsh-made tents, and are not proof against the attacks of white ants. A floorcloth of the same canvas as the tent, but of a coarser and stronger material, cut to the exact size of the tent, is a great comfort. This can be packed with the body of the tent, without making it too heavy a load. A bathroom attached to the fly on the Indian principle is also a comfort, and affords extra room for private gear,