2 LARGE GAME. . CHAP. i. 



posture the great heat could induce, lay about twenty 

 Kaffirs, their guns and assagais beside them. On the side 

 on which I slept a dried buffalo-hide had been thrown to 

 protect me from the heavy night-dew, while two or three 

 propped up formed a screen for the now smouldering fires 

 which guarded the entrance. On the ground outside, 

 and strewed all about, were hides and skins, horns of 

 various kinds, and innumerable relics of departed dinners, 

 in the shape of marrow and other bones, while a few 

 yards off the dim shadows of great masses of buffalo- 

 beef could be distinguished, hung out of the reach of 

 prowling hyenas or jackals on an adjacent thorn-tree. 

 Several dogs lay curled up at their master's feet, giving 

 an occasional howl as they were kicked away by the hot 

 and restless sleepers. Such was our hunting camp dur- 

 ing the summer of 1870 in the far interior of Eastern 

 Africa. 



Outside all was perfectly still and calm, not a breath 

 of air stirring, and nothing to break the silence but the 

 occasional mournful howl of a passing wolf. It was so 

 light that once or twice I went out fancying that dawn 

 was breaking, and at last, tired of waiting, I started. 

 The country around was a dead flat, unbroken for hun- 

 dreds of miles, and covered with thorns of every variety, 

 here and there deepening into almost impenetrable 

 thickets, or opening out into treeless glades. About a 

 mile off was the Unkomati, a river of considerable size, 

 along the banks of which I now went ; for as all game 

 comes down to drink about dawn, I was certain to find 

 plenty of antelopes, and at that early hour I was not 

 unlikely to come across the larger and more rare animals. 



