48 Eecollections of Adventures 



Philip Minnaar shouted to me from the other side 

 that his gun would not go off, so I entered the bush, 

 when the cow came at me full tilt, and I had hardly 

 time to turn my horse. A man, Casper Badenhorst, 

 who was following close behind me, took fright, 

 threw his gun away which struck my horse on his 

 foreleg. The cow then gained on me and scored the 

 horse's haunches, trying to get her horn into his flank 

 to throw him, but I never used spurs to such effective 

 purpose in my life, and at last lifted the slug over a 

 fallen tree stump, against which the wounded cow 

 brought up with a crash. I jumped off and shot her 

 before she could recover herself, but I had a nasty 

 fright. I then had to ride back, for the gun of 

 the coward who nearly stopped my horse at 

 a critical moment, and which nearly cost me my life. 

 He was too frightened to go into the scrub himself, as 

 he thought there were more buffaloes in it. I would 

 not allow him to hunt with me again, and ordered 

 him and his friends, (who had only joined me as they 

 were afraid of Mapela's Kaffirs,) to leave our camp, 

 and they returned home next day. I had more 

 than one narrow escape. We had about 90 buffalo 

 in front of us in heavy sand veld below Matala's 

 and had shot several ; I turned back to kill any 

 wounded ones, among others, a very large bull I 

 had, as I thought, hit hard. I found him standing 

 under a tree in the shade ; so tying my exhausted 

 horse to a tree, stalked him on foot. I fired and hit 

 him too far forward in the neck, so he charged. I 

 could not reach the horse, so scrambled up the near- 

 est tree, a young one with two stems, and I was 

 hardly out of reach of his tongue, when he began to 

 bellow and butt at the tree, and as the tree was 

 small tried to knock me out. Fortunately, the 

 bleeding from the cut jugular vein partially blinded 

 him, and he pumped away at the wrong stem, going 



