180 STALKS ABROAD 



sadly. My first shot was low and far back. It did 

 little to stop him. The second was farther forward, 

 but not quite far enough. Three, as he was running 

 away from me, " haunched " him and broke his hind- 

 leg. The next went through his neck, and the last, as 

 he turned, went in at his left shoulder and stuck 

 under the skin on the opposite side, bringing him 

 down. Even then he did not die until a final shot 

 found its way to his heart. This was with a "275 

 Rigby Mauser and soft-nosed bullets, and though not 

 a record to be proud of, illustrates the vitality of these 

 animals, and incidentally the importance of putting 

 one's first shot in exactly the right place. 



After my first shot at this hartebeest, I fired at 

 one which I took to be the same, and did strike it in 

 the right place. After running a few yards it fell dead. 

 Only afterwards did I discover that it was a cow and 

 not the bull that I had originally fired at. Again, 

 Burton shot a Jackson bull through the shoulder 

 with a '350 soft -nosed bullet. It jumped straight 

 into the air, ran for a quarter of a mile as hard as it 

 could go, spread its legs, waggled its head and then 

 collapsed. These antelope are finer animals than 

 Coke's hartebeest, or, as they are universally termed, 

 Congoni, though both are excessively ugly. I think 

 that the latter, which are by far the most numerous, 

 are not possessed of such enormous vitality. 



That first day's sport in the solitudes of Africa 

 (how much longer will the term apply?) is full of 

 memories. Of Kenia, misty and unreal in the early 



