IRoualcvn George Gordon Cummtuo 265 



" I was utterly in the dark," says Gordon Gumming, 

 " as to what sport I might expect to realise and what 

 difficulties I should have to encounter, and there was no 

 one to enlighten me." His sporting friends at the Cape 

 assured him that game had all retreated into such remote 

 and savage parts that no sportsman could reach them, 

 and that his proposed expedition was sheer midsummer 

 madness. "You'll only get sunstroke and dysentery," 

 they said, " and it's twenty to one against your ever 

 coming back alive." 



But Roualeyn turned a deaf ear to these croakers, 

 bought a couple of waggons, with teams of oxen, hired 

 three natives and one Englishman (an ex-Cockney cab- 

 man !), and set out on his adventures. 



It may interest sportsmen to know what " battery " 

 he took with him, and I therefore quote the following : 



" My ordnance was as follows : 3 double-barrelled 

 rifles by Purdey, William Moore, and Dickson of Edin- 

 burgh the latter a two-grooved, the most perfect and 

 useful rifle I ever had the pleasure of using; one heavy 

 single-barrelled German rifle, carrying 12 to the Ib. 

 This last was an old companion, which had been pre- 

 sented to me when a boy, by my dear and much- 

 lamented friend and brother-sportsman, the late James 

 Duff, of Innes House. With this rifle, about ten years 

 before, I had brought down my first stag on the Paps of 

 Jura, and subsequently bowled over many a master- 

 stag, and graceful roebuck in his summer coat, throughout 

 the glens and forests of my native land. The Purdey 

 was also a tried friend, both it and the heavy German 

 having been with me in several campaigns on the plains 



