194 A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS ch. 



dry the bufFalo meat before proceeding farther, I 

 resolved to devote the rest of the day to then- pursuit. 

 Promising my informants fat and meat in case of 

 success, I started, telhng my two gun-carriers to 

 follow meanwhile the spoor of the buffalo I had 

 wounded, and despatch him, as I felt sure he could 

 not have gone very far. 



A paddle of some two miles brought us to a small 

 island, the residence of my guides. On this little 

 patch of dry ground, not more than thirty yards 

 square, and nowhere rising more than three feet above 

 the level of the water, some seven or eight families 

 of natives had made a temporary home. In the 

 centre and highest part of the island they had cleared 

 away the underwood, and erected a few flimsy sort of 

 huts, made either of reeds or by stretching grass mats 

 on poles. On my walking amongst them, clad solely 

 in a coloured cotton shirt and an old felt hat, there 

 was a wild stampede amongst the women, who, 

 catching up their dusky offspring, rushed away, 

 shrieking with fear, from the fair-skinned, bearded 

 apparition. One of my guides, after shouting to 

 them that I was harmless, brought me a small stool, 

 neatly cut out of a solid block ot wood, on which I sat 

 down at the foot of a small palm tree, and looked 

 about me. Curiosity before long conquered all other 

 feelings in the minds of the fair sex, and I was soon 

 surrounded by the entire female and juvenile popula- 

 tion of the encampment, who kept staring at me in 

 the most embarrassing manner, laughing and pointing 

 at me all the time, and making remarks, none of 

 which, perhaps luckily for my feelings, I was able to 

 understand. I was the first white man any of these 

 women and children had ever seen, though some ot 

 the men said they had seen Livingstone — whom they 



