CHAP. viir. ANECDOTES OF ANTELOPES. 399 



antagonist, I had no choice but to club the gun and deal 

 it a blow on the head, which stunned it, but at the same 

 time broke the stock, an accident of no small importance 

 in a country where the nearest gun-maker is very possibly 

 five hundred miles off, and will probably charge you as 

 much as would suffice in these days of cheap muzzle-loaders 

 to buy the gun outright. 



The duiker is also, among the small antelopes, by far 

 the most tenacious of life, and I remember one that dis- 

 played that quality in a remarkable degree. Accompanied 

 by two or three Kaffirs, I was driving a small piece of 

 jungle, wliich was so thick that, except in the very spot 

 where I was standing, I could not see a yard any way, 

 and while waiting here a duiker came out and rushed 

 past me within five yards ; I had a heavy charge of s.s.G. 

 in and five drachms of powder behind it, and without 

 putting the gun to my shoulder — for there was no time 

 to do so — I merely held it out at arm's length, so that the 

 muzzle could not have been many feet from the a-mmal's 

 body, and fired. It did not, however, fall to the shot, 

 but ran down the hill some seventy or eighty yards, 

 where one of the Kaffirs caught and killed it. On follow- 

 ing its track down I was never more astonished in my 

 life, as the shot had made an enormous hole six or eight 

 inches in diameter, and the vitality that could run seventy 

 yards afterwards, and then had to be killed, must be 

 accounted as something wonderful. 



The roi raebuck, though inhabiting thorn districts, 

 prefers such as are on stony and broken ground. It is 

 a fine large antelope, but little smaller than the reed-buck, 

 to which it bears a marked resemblance, though its 



