138 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



antagonist much more quickly than a buffalo, but 

 the former is, I think, much more savage by nature, 

 on the average, than the latter. As regards vicious- 

 ness I should be inclined to put the buffalo third 

 on the list of dangerous African game, without 

 reckoning the leopard (of which animal I have not 

 had sufficient experience to offer an opinion) and 

 the black rhinoceros (whose true character it seems 

 so difficult to understand) ; for, whilst putting the 

 lion first, I think the elephant should come second, 

 as I believe that of a hundred elephants shot, a 

 greater proportion will charge than of the same 

 number of buffaloes. However, a charging elephant 

 can almost always be stopped with a bullet, and it is 

 most difficult to stop a charging buffalo ; therefore 

 the latter is perhaps actually the more dangerous 

 animal of the two. 



To follow a wounded buffalo into a bed of reeds, 

 or into long grass, where it is almost impossible to 

 see it before getting to very close quarters, is a 

 most dangerous, not to say foolhardy, proceeding. 

 It is quite exciting enough to follow one of these 

 animals when wounded into thick bush, but there 

 you have a chance of seeing it as soon as, if not 

 before, it sees you. 



I have had a very considerable experience with 

 South African buffaloes, having killed 175 of these 

 animals to my own rifle, and helped to kill at least 

 fifty others. When hunting on the Chobi river in 

 1877, and again in 1879, I had to shoot a great 

 many buffaloes to supply my native followers with 

 meat, as I did not come across many elephants in 

 either of those years. 



During 1877 I killed to my own rifle forty-seven 

 buffaloes, and in 1879 fifty. All these buffaloes, 

 with the exception of five, which I shot when hunt- 

 ing on horseback near the Mababi river in the latter 

 year, were killed on foot, and a large number of 



