132 



A BUFFALO HUNT [ch. vi 



bosses sometimes meeting in old age so as to cover the 

 forehead with a frontlet of horn. Their habits vary 

 much in different places. Where they are much per- 

 secuted, they lie in the densest cover, and only venture 

 out into the open to feed at night. But Heatley, 

 though he himself had killed a couple of bulls, and the 

 Boer farmer who was working for him another, had 

 preserved the herd from outside molestation, and their 

 habits were doubtless much what they would have been 

 in regions where man is a rare visitor. 



The first day we were on Heatley 's farm, we saw the 

 buffalo, to the number of seventy or eighty, grazing in 

 the open, some hundreds of yards from the papyrus 

 swamp, and this shortly after noon. For a mile from 

 the papyrus swamp the country was an absolutely flat 

 plain, gradually rising into a gentle slope, and it was an 

 impossibility to approach the buffalo across this plain 

 save in one way, to be mentioned hereafter. Probably 

 when the moon was full the buffalo came out to graze by 

 night. But while we were on our hunt the moon was 

 young, and the buffalo evidently spent most of the 

 night in the papyrus, and came out to graze by day. 

 Sometimes they came out in the early morning, some- 

 times in the late evening, but quite as often in the 

 bright daylight. We saw herds come out to graze at 

 ten o'clock in the morning, and again at three in the 

 afternoon. They usually remained out several hours, 

 first grazing and then lying down. Flocks of the small 

 white cow- heron usually accompanied them, the birds 

 stalking about among them or perching on their backs ; 

 and occasionally the whereabouts of the herd in the 

 papyrus swamp could be determined by seeing the flock 

 of herons perched on the papyrus tops. We did not 

 see any of the red-billed tick-birds on the buffalo; 



