112 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



gifted. I have seen some excellent runs with them, 

 and Sir Frederick Carrington tells me that he has 

 known them often make a ten or twelve mile point. 

 They are certainly far harder to account for than 

 the jackal, good as the latter is. 



The average English hunting man, accustomed 

 as he is to the green pastures, moist ploughs, and 

 swampy woodlands, and the almost invariably soft 

 going of the old country, would, upon a first survey 

 of the African veldt, pronounce it utterly hopeless 

 for foxhounds and their followers. 



He would see vast, sun-parched plains, thinly 

 covered with long yellow grass — looking like nothing 

 else than a boundless, over-ripe hayfield — a reddish 

 soil, sun-baked and sandy, and dry as a brick-kiln, 

 and abounding in all directions with trappy holes 

 made by the ant-bear, the jackal, and the colonies 

 of meerkats — small viverrine creatures, not unlike 

 the mongoose of India. These earths and holes are 

 a constant source of tribulation to the fox-hunter 

 in Southern Africa, as they are to the big-game 

 hunter farther up country, where the larger fauna 

 still abound. The long grass hides their perils ; 

 falls are pretty numerous, and, but for the sharpness 

 and sagacity of the Cape hunting-ponies, would be 

 of even more frequent occurrence than they are. 



But, apart from the natural difficulties of the 

 country, there are no other obstacles; the veldt is 



