vii WILD DOGS AND BUFFALOES 121 



a herd of perhaps forty or fifty buffaloes coming 

 straight towards me at a lumbering gallop. At 

 the same time I heard a noise which sounded like 

 kak-kak-kak constantly repeated. The buffaloes 

 came straight on towards me, and had I remained 

 quiet would have run right over me, so when they 

 were within twenty yards I jumped up and shouted. 

 The leaders stopped for a moment, and then, swerv- 

 ing slightly, dashed close past me. I fired into one 

 of them, and immediately afterwards saw some wild 

 dogs a pack of about twenty jumping up in the 

 long grass to look at me. 



They had been hanging on to the rear of the 

 herd of buffaloes, which they had undoubtedly 

 first put to flight, and had they not been dis- 

 turbed, would, I think, have probably succeeded 

 in pulling down a young animal. Had I not 

 witnessed this incident with my own eyes, I never 

 should have thought it possible that a herd of 

 buffaloes would have allowed themselves to be 

 stampeded by a few wild dogs. These latter gave 

 up the chase as soon as they saw me, and after 

 hoo-hooing a little, trotted off. The barking hoo- 

 hoo and the clacking kak-kak-kak are the only 

 sounds that I have ever heard wild dogs make, but 

 I cannot claim to have had much experience with 

 these animals. Wild dogs sometimes hunt by day, 

 but more usually at night, and in the latter case 

 must be guided entirely by their acute sense of 

 smell. As a rule, they certainly run mute. 



On the first occasion on which I ever had any- 

 thing to do with wild dogs, they ran into and killed 

 an impala antelope quite close to my waggon on 

 a dark night in 1872. We ran up with lights and 

 drove them from the carcase, a good deal of which 

 they had, however, already devoured. About a 

 month later another pack of wild dogs drove a 

 koodoo cow into a shed used as a stable, attached 



