58 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



bag. On another day, shortly after, three of the same 

 hunters killed nineteen elephants out of a troop of 

 twenty-one. These are enormous bags, but they are 

 quite put into the shade by the exploit of two or 

 three Boer hunters, named Van Zyl, some three-and- 

 twenty years ago in the Okavango River Country, 

 north-west of Lake Ngami. These men were part 

 of the great trek which left the Transvaal towards 

 1879 and made its way painfully and laboriously, and 

 with infinite loss of life and fortune, to the Portu- 

 guese province of Mossamedes, on the West Coast. 

 The hunters managed to drive a troop of 104 

 elephants into a marsh, where the unfortunate beasts 

 became completely embogged. They were all slain 

 during the course of a single day. It was a wasteful 

 and most wanton slaughter, the more inexcusable 

 from the fact that a large number of the animals were 

 cows and calves, and their tusks either of small 

 account or lacking altogether. 



During his first three seasons 1873, 1874, and 

 1875 as a professional elephant - hunter, Selous 

 shot seventy -eight elephants, nearly all of them 

 secured with a common smooth-bore elephant gun, 

 such as was formerly used by the Dutch hunters. 

 This rude weapon, which now hangs in Mr. 

 Selous' Museum at Worplesdon, in Surrey, carried 

 four spherical balls to the pound, and was loaded 

 with 17 drachms of trade powder. Its recoil was 

 naturally terrific ; and one cannot sufficiently admire 

 the hardihood and strength of nerve displayed 

 by the old school of hunters who could, and did, 



