64 Recollections of Adventures 



a time I woke with a start, feeling something biting 

 my toe, and jumping up, banged my head violently 

 on the bottom of the wagon, then saw instead of a 

 snake, a wretched little mouse run out from under 

 my blankets. " Oh, ridiculus mus ! " 



Once after hunting Buffalo all day on the Klein 

 Mahalaquena River on foot, having left our horses at 

 the camp near " Roodekrantz" for fear of tsetse fly 

 ("Glossina Morsitans"),we were following up wounded 

 buffalo, our bearers having remained behind skinning 

 and cutting up those killed, and not turning up, w 

 went back to look for them, and found them roosting 

 in trees all round, two " Magali " (black rhinoceros) 

 having charged them. They came off their perches 

 when they saw us. The " rhinos " had left and we 

 could not find them. That night a party of Boers 

 from Bronkhorst Spruit asked our permission to join 

 our bivouac. The fear of the black " rhino " was in 

 both them, and the Kaffirs, and we had an amusing 

 night. After a supper of buffalo grill, ivithout salt, 

 and dry biscuit, we selected trees to get into, in case 

 the rhinos came and charged the camp. I selected a 

 liquorice tree, "Witgatboom " with a comfortable seat 

 in a fork, six feet from the ground ; and placed my 

 two guns against it and lay alongside. At midnight 

 a great commotion was started, the Makalaka Kaffirs 

 we had hired to carry hides to the distant wagons, 

 had much overeaten themselves and lay about, 

 when an old male lion jumped in among them, 

 they shouting "Magali," (black rhinoceros), came 

 belter skelter over our camp, mixed up with their 

 overgorged dogs, and blundered over the Boers 

 Bleeping by the fires twenty yards away. I jumped 

 into my special tree, but one Badenhorst was just 

 getting on to my seat in the tree, when my hunting 

 cap of strong leather, with my head inside it, struck 



