A POST-MOETEM. 35 



a little pepper and salt in them, a cloth tied over their ends 

 to keep the marrow in, boiled in a pot a large pot, and full! 

 And there was also a fine chance to go in the pursuit of 

 useful information, with a certainty of obtaining the desired 

 knowledge. We started after the useful, &c., and on dis- 

 secting the subject, found it. 



A single shot having killed the buffalo whose body lay 

 in the valley, evidently one shot in the right place was 

 sufficient to kill but where was that spot ? We sat down 

 on the body and held a post-mortem. Verdict : Death by a 

 gun-shot wound through the butt of the lights, causing 

 stoppage of the beat of the heart by drowning it in blood. 

 Not scientific, perhaps, but eminently satisfactory ; because 

 the lights of a buffalo are as big as your hat, and, being 

 situated where there is least motion when its owner is 

 galloping, they afford a comparatively easy target ; while 

 the only place in his head where a ball would stop him is so 

 small, and from the shape of his skull, and its up and down 

 motion when the animal is going, so difficult to hit, as to 

 render a shot thereat as uncertain as one at his heart would 

 be ; which, lying low down, and far forward, is a most risky 

 mark, especially as it does not give a section larger than the 

 palm of the hand. 



All which facts we discovered by that interesting post- 

 mortem, as also the different angles at which the fatal shot 

 could be made ; and before many days the killing of two or 

 three buffaloes to the "run" became a matter of course. 



The main herd seemed to have settled to their feeding 

 ground, and as we were careful only to disturb the small 

 outlying bunches of cattle, we had a continuation of 



D 2 



