32 LARGE GAME. CHAP. i. 



me on the left knee, causing excruciating pain, and hurl- 

 ing me violently on my back. The brute passed over me, 

 paused, turned, and again lowering its head, rushed at me, 

 but Umdumela, who had run forward with his unloaded 

 gun, seeing how matters were, and catching sight of the 

 other hunter's gun on the ground, snatched it up, and put 

 a bullet of six to the pound through her shoulder, making 

 her stumble as she reached me, and after running about 

 ten yards, drop dead. 



On attempting to move I found that my knee was 

 seriously hurt ; and on ripping up the trousers we found 

 the knee-cap had been thrust up out of its position, and 

 that the small bone or knuckle immediately below it 

 was fractured, while the whole of it was tremendously 

 bruised. 



For weeks after I could not even turn my leg without 

 assistance, and was slightly lame up to last year, and 

 even now cannot trust the sinews above the knee for any 

 unusual exertion. There was little doubt but that the 

 brute was the same cow whose calf we had found, as she 

 proved to be in milk ; and that she was not the one I had 

 already wounded was proved by there only being a single 

 bullet-mark, Umdumela having fired at another, and this 

 one having as before at once charged him. 



Only one species of buffalo (Bubalus Coffer] is found in 

 the southern part of Africa (though another, differing princi- 

 pally in the shape of its horns, is met with further north), 

 and it appears from the accounts of travellers to exist all over 

 that continent. Slight modifications, however, are found 

 in size, and in the shape of the horn, the few buffaloes 

 that inhabit the heavy timber jungles being unusually 



