CHAPTER XVI 



FURTHER CURIOUS HUNTING EXPERIENCES 



Travelling through the wilderness — Find deep pool of water — Meet 

 with two tsessebe antelopes — Shoot them both — Cover one of 

 them with dry grass to keep off vultures — Ride back to waggon 

 — Return to pool of water — Find tsessebe antelope gone — 

 Never recovered — Journey to Bamangwato — Gemsbuck seen — 

 Stalk spoilt — Long, stern chase — Gemsbuck wounded — Lost 

 through glare of setting sun — Wildebeest seen — Return to 

 waggon — Arrival of Count von Schweinitz — Lost gemsbuck 

 found — Two hartebeests shot. 



Towards the end of May 1884, I was travelling 

 westwards through the uninhabited stretch of 

 wilderness which lies between the Gwai and the 

 Botletlie rivers. I had a roomy waggon for a 

 home, a good span of oxen, some spare cattle and 

 milch cows, and three salted^ shooting horses. I 

 had bade good-bye a month previously to the few 

 Englishmen who were at that time living near the 

 native town of Bulawayo, and was not destined to 

 see another white face or hear my mother-tongue 

 spoken for many months to come. My servants 

 were a Griqua waggon-driver, a lad of the same 

 nationality who looked after the horses, and two 

 Kafir boys. But, besides these, I had with me, 

 at the time of which I am writing, a few Masarwa 

 Bushmen, who had accompanied me in the hope of 



1 That is, horses which had contracted and recovered from the most virulent 

 form of horse sickness. 



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