292 THE LAND OF THE LION 
I have never heard anything as nerve-shaking as the 
noise made by fifty or more buffalo when charging through 
dense scrub. The fact that they are quite invisible when 
within so short a distance as fifteen yards, adds to the strain, 
the tornado of sound, snorting, whistling, crashing, thun- 
ders on, you feel that you must be swept down. But no, 
the aes column sees you a few yards off, __ you 
can see nothing, and stops like a wall. 
Long before this point in the proceedings is reached the 
trackers and any gunbearers that are not first rate have 
decamped, and I do not blame them. Dooda would have 
retreated if he had dared, but he knew well what he would 
have got had he done so. As usual, my Brownie was cool 
and calm, standing up to my elbow. 
As with rhino charging, so with buffalo. ‘The action of 
the animals is often misunderstood. The black mass 
rushes forward. A wild fire is opened, men take to the trees 
if there are any. The herd divides or sweeps back, and the 
sportsman by the camp fire has yet another blood-curdling 
yarn to tell, of gory death narrowly averted by strenuous rifle 
fire. Of course it is not so. Had he kept his nerve and 
stood his ground silently, his men (gunbearers at least) would 
have been quiet and he would have really learned something 
of the mystery of jungle life. I have three times awaited a 
rushing column of buffalo in densest scrub. They have 
come up at great speed to within a very few yards, then 
stood stock still for half a minute, sometimes more, and 
then as wildly rushed away. 
A single old bull, or a cow with calf, is a far more deadly 
antagonist than a whole charging herd. 
While I was in the Protectorate I heard of four white 
men who were tossed by buffalo. One was killed, another, 
though horned three times and trampled on, was not much 
hurt. The other two were rather severely wounded. 
Why my wounded bull never mustered up courage to 
