A MORNING AMBUSCADE ON WITTEBERG. 277 



father forty years ago. It is a wonderful gun, an 

 ancient smoothbore, with a barrel as long as a 

 yard-arm almost, and it goes off with a report like 

 a cannon. Its spherical bullets, eight to the pound, 

 make a nasty hole in a buck, and their handiwork is 

 plainly apparent. 



Six buck four klipspringers and a brace of 

 rhebok form the bag, as we think a capital 

 morning's work ; for, stalked in the usual way, 

 these mountain dwellers require an infinity of care 

 and trouble to procure ; yet, when secured, the 

 reward of your labour is sweet, and a mountain 

 buck is well worth the stalk, fatiguing though it 

 may have been. The only objection to the fun 

 we have been indulging in, is, that it is too quickly 

 over. The rhebok are hidden with stones and 

 bush till a horse can be sent up for them, and 

 each of us shouldering one of the four klipspringers, 

 we make our way down hill towards breakfast. The 

 mountain air up here is bracing and most delicious, 

 and, by the way, how confoundedly hungry it makes 

 one. Here we are nearly 5,000 feet above sea level, 

 and the health-giving breeze seems to send a tingling 

 sense of life and buoyancy hurrying through one's 

 veins. In these regions and amid such surroundings 

 one lives; in the dense and sickly atmosphere of 

 cities one exists. Can there be a comparison 

 between the pleasures of such a life and such an 

 existence ? I trow not. They who have tasted the 

 pleasures of this clear healthy atmosphere and 

 gloriously beautiful country, will agree with me 

 that six months here are worth long years of 

 dwelling in towns. Yet, on the other hand, I 

 suppose custom can stale even the pleasures of 



