134 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



this country, a coat of black hair which becomes thin in the 

 old bulls, and massive horns which rise into great bosses at 

 the base, these 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 

 persecuted, 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, sometimes 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 after- 

 noon. 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 occa- 



