Wild Flowers and Fruit. 259 



excitement at having seen close by the road a hii-ge 

 herd of elands, as they said, some fifty in nnmber. 

 Next morning Lee and " the Baboon " foniid the 

 spoor of these elands, and tried for a couple of 

 hours unsuccessfally to follow it. I then again 

 trekked, but had not proceeded far before I over- 

 took one of my friends of the previous evening, 

 who had been out shooting, and had killed a roan 

 anteloj^e, had seen the elands in the distance, as 

 also some ostrich, neither of which, being on foot, 

 had he been able to pursue. On receiving this 

 intellio'ence, Lee and I immediately mounted our 

 horses, and, leaving the waggon to trek on to 

 Hartley Hill, rode on toA^'ards the spot where the 

 elands were supposed to be. On this day I saw a 

 greater quantity and variety of game than I had 

 seen on any other since I began hunting in Africa. 

 AVe first sighted some large buck, which we took 

 to be elands ; getting near them, they turned out 

 to be a herd of seven fine koodoo bulls. I took a 

 shot at one of them at a distance of over 200 

 yards, but was not successful, the herd galloping 

 off just as I pulled the trigger. We did not j^ursue 

 them, as eland was the game we were after. We 

 soon came upon the s^^oor of the eland, quite fresh, 

 indicating their proximity. While we were 

 following it up through a grove of trees ^ye dis- 

 cerned about half a mile out on the plain five 

 ostriches. It Av^as now a question which to go 

 after, the ostrich or the eland, and after much 

 hesitation and discussion we determined to chase 

 the ostrich. We had a good gallop after these for 



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