A SAD MISTAKE. 81 



flashed upon me ; Strydom and I had both been mis- 

 taken ; instead of qnaggas, the wagon-team of a neigh- 

 boring Dutchman had afforded me my evening's shoot- 

 ing ! 



I caught my stallion and rode home, intending to 

 pay for the horses which I had killed and wounded ; 

 but on telling my story to Strydom, with which he 

 seemed extremely amused, he told me not to say a 

 word about it, as the owners of the horses were very 

 avaricious, and would make me pay treble their value, 

 and that, if I kept quiet, it would be supposed they had 

 been killed either by lions or wild Bushmen. Strydom 

 and I continued hunting springboks till the 17th, dur- 

 ing which time we enjoyed a constant run of good luck, 

 and so fascinating was the sport that I felt as though 

 I never could tire of it. It was, indeed, a country 

 where a person who loved rifle-shooting ought to have 

 been content. Every morning, on opening my eyes, 

 the first thing which I saw, without raising my head 

 from the pillow, was herds of hundreds of springboks 

 grazing before me on the plains. On the 17th, an old 

 friend of Strydom's, a Boer from Magalisberg, outspan- 

 ned on the farm. He had been to Grahamstown with 

 a load of ivory, and was returning home with supplies 

 of tea, coffee, clothing, &c., sufficient for two years' 

 consumption. He was accompanied by his wife and 

 two tall gawky-looking daughters, and half a dozen 

 noisy geese, which were secured in a cage on the trap 

 of the wagon. This Boer informed me that I could 

 get all the rarer animals which I wished to shoot in his 

 vicinity, namely, sable antelope, roan antelope, eland, 

 water-buck, koodoo, pallah, elephant, black and white 

 rhinoceros, hippopotamus, giraffe, buffalo, lion, &c. 

 He told me he had shot elephants there with tasks 



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