22 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



witnessed many of tbese pilgrimages on our way up 

 and down country. 



These Zambesi people had some very beautiful 

 specimens of barbed assegais and native axes, and 

 were willing to trade them for meal and money. 

 We secured some excellent examples of native work 

 in this way. Dove also bartered a very curious pipe 

 made out of a koodoo horn. These natives had, by 

 the way, some fresh koodoo meat with them, which 

 they had obtained somehow on the road a day or so 

 beyond. 



Our oxen rested after their forty-eight hours' 

 waterless trek until well into the afternoon, when 

 the heat of day was past. After the morning meal 

 we therefore pottered about upon a grass flat near 

 camp. Dove shot a brace of those charming game 

 birds, the Coqui francolins {Francolinus su'btorqitatus)^ 

 the smallest and most beautiful of all African 

 partridges. Upon the same flat I also shot, as a 

 specimen, a single Burchell's courser. This small 

 and very elegant member of this long-legged branch 

 of the great plover family {Gharadriadcc) is found 

 here and there in flat open country in much of 

 South Africa. Its general colouring is fawn, or 

 sandy-buff — a very protective colouring, too, in much 

 of the country it inhabits. There are reddish- 

 brown patches upon the neck and front of the head, 

 and a black and white wreath or crown runs from 



