I20 THE PLAINS OF RUISAMBA 



it iwas never anything more dangerous than an 

 agitated bush-buck. When two of the party were 

 out shooting one day one of them shot a partridge, 

 which fell within a few feet of an unseen buffalo. 

 Instead of charging, as is the unpleasant habit 

 of buffaloes, the great brute was as much astonished 

 as they were, and had the grace to retire, or the 

 numbers of the expedition might have been seriously 

 diminished. 



The Ruisamba plains seemed to us, who had been 

 so long in the mountains, to be excessively hot, and 

 as the land became parched with the dry season, the 

 heat grew more intense ; but it was saved from 

 becoming oppressive by the almost daily thunder- 

 storms, which hardly ever failed us. In the early 

 afternoon we could generally see two or three 

 storms scudding across the plain from the east, their 

 course marked by a whisp of rain-cloud, and a dark 

 line of waving grass and trees. .Soon we could 

 hear one rushing through the plantations below, and 

 in a minute it would be upon us with a burst of 

 wind, which threatened to carry the tents and every- 

 thing bodily away, and then came a deluge of rain, 

 which meant hurriedly slackening the tent-ropes to 

 prevent them from straining the pegs out of the 

 ground. In ten minutes or a quarter of an hour the 

 storm had passed, the rain dried up in an incredibly 

 short time, and we could look forward to a calm even- 

 ing in which to pursue our various occupations of 

 shooting small birds for the collection, or partridges 



