296 A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS ch. 



knocked him over ; he was on his legs again in a 

 moment, and wheeling round came straight towards 

 me at a heavy gallop, his nose stretched straight out 

 and grunting furiously. When he was about twenty 

 yards from me, I fired with my large four-bore 

 elephant gun, and struck him fair in the chest. 

 This staggered but did not stop him, for, swerving 

 slightly, he made straight for the Kafir carrying my 

 second gun ; this the man at once threw down, and 

 commenced climbing a tree. The bufi-alo just brought 

 his right horn past the tree, and scraping it up the 

 trunk so as to send all the loose pieces of bark flying, 

 caught the Kafir a severe blow on the inside of the 

 knee, nearly knocking him out of the tree. The 

 sturdy beast then ran about twenty yards farther, 

 knelt gently down, and stretching forth its nose 

 commenced to bellow, as these animals almost always 

 do when dying ; in a (qw minutes it was lying dead. 



Buff^iloes that have been wounded by lions are 

 usually, and not unnaturally, ill-tempered. One 

 cold winter morning in 1873, ^ ^^^^ ^^^7 camp before 

 sunrise, and had not walked a quarter of a mile 

 skirting round the base of a low hill, when, close to 

 the same path I was following, and not twenty yards 

 off, I saw an old buffalo bull lying under a bush. 

 He was lying head on towards us, but did not appear 

 to notice us. My gun-carriers were behind, having 

 lingered, Kafir-like, over the camp-fire, but had they 

 been nearer me I should not have fired for fear of 

 disturbing elephants, of which animals I was in 

 search. 



As I stood looking at the buffalo, Minyama, one 

 of my Kafirs, threw an assegai at it from behind me, 

 which, grazing its side, just stuck in the skin on the 

 inside of its thigh. Without more ado, the ugly- 



