290 THE LAND OF THE LION 
an animal that to my mind carries the finest trophy in Africa, 
follows it up as a matter of course. So we followed on and 
on. Alas, I have no triumphant ending to tell of. The day 
was warm and in the bush the heat was stifling. We stooped, 
we crawled, now and then straightening up, when over- 
hanging cactus and clinging thorns permitted, to wipe off 
the sweat and go on again. ‘Twice we roused him. ‘Twice 
we found where he had lain down, and there were blood 
spoor. My 114-pound rifle grew very heavy and my 
nerves were on the quiz vive every instant of the time. But 
the dense scrub and suffocating day were against us and 
the afternoon torrent came down and blood signs were 
washed out, I had unwillingly to acknowledge defeat. But 
it was a great day, and I would not forego having heard that 
terrorizing sound, that thunderous rush of the aroused and 
stampeded herd at a few yards’ distance in the well-nigh 
impenetrable jungle, for a great deal. In the dark forest of 
the Congo the hunter of future years may for many a day 
hear it. But from penetrable Africe this mightiest of the 
wild tribe of Bos must soon perish. In Uganda the buffalo 
are in some places so destructive to native shambas that their 
extermination is demanded. ‘They seem, too (though all 
well-informed men are not as yet agreed on this point) to 
bring in their train the dreaded tsetse fly, one of the worst 
of all African scourges; and not only at the advent of the 
white man must they perish, but as the native learns to 
cultivate the land they must go, as their habit of night feed- 
ing is ruinous to the cultivator. 
Some time after I had written these notes on my long 
hunt after a wounded buffalo in the cactus thickets of the 
Quasi Nyiro, a fact came to my knowledge which largely | 
accounted for my failure to bag that fine bull. 
My Somali gunbearer, Dooda, though a keen hunter and 
brave man, had in full measure the usual Somali’s fault of 
overweening conceit. He had got it into his head that the 
