SOME OF OUR PETS, 33 



meekly submittinf^ ; till we interfered, and by separa- 

 ting the two at feeding-time ensured an equal divisioiL 

 Joseph's general conduct was cruel and unbrotherly ; 

 and when one day, during the process of packing to 

 move up-country, he came to an untimely end, being 

 accidentally crushed under the heaviest " Saratoga," 

 we naturally expected Benjamin to rejoice. Instead 

 of this, however, the little fellow pined and fretted ; 

 refusing to eat, and calling incessantly with his little 

 mournful cry of three soft musical notes in a minor 

 key, as if hoping to bring back his oppressor — from 

 whom he ouofht to have been thankful to be free — and 

 at the end of two days he also was dead. 



During one of T 's journeys up-country he made 



a strange purchase, which he forwarded at once to me 

 by train. It was a baby buffalo, which had been taken 

 alive by the hunters who shot its mother. The buffalo 

 being a rare animal in the Cape Colony, we looked on 

 this little specimen as a great acquisition ; and, had he 

 lived, he would have been a very valuable, though 

 perhaps in time somewhat formidable addition to the 

 menagerie ; but the railway officials to whose care he 

 was consigned being no exception to the generality of 

 Cape colonists — whose usual way of doing business is 

 to let things take care of themselves — the poor little 

 fellow was put into the train without being fastened 

 or secured in any way, and the jolting he received en 

 route knocked him about so that he arrived in a very 

 Kad state, with his head cut and bleeding in several 

 places ; and did not live many days. 



