SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 33 



placed them round the drawing-room, and on coming upstairs 

 I found two young men examining them intently. ' What's all 

 this ? ' one asked. ' I don't know,' the other replied. ' Oh, 

 I see now,' the first continued, ' a second Baron Munchausen ; 

 don't you think so ? ' he inquired, appealing to me. We were 

 strangers to each other, so I corroborated his bright and 

 certainly pardonable solution ; but they are true nevertheless. 

 I have kept them down to the truth : indeed, two of them 

 fall short of it. I am very well aware that there are two ways 

 of telling a story, one with a clearly defined boundary, the 

 other with a hazy one, over which if your reader or hearer pass 

 but a foot's length he is in the realms of myth. I think I had 

 my full share of mishaps ; but I was in the saddle from ten 

 to twelve hours a day for close upon five seasons, and general 

 immunity, perhaps, induced carelessness. I may say now, I 

 suppose, that I was a good rider, and got quickly on terms 

 with my game. I was, however, never a crack shot, and not very 

 well armed according to present notions, though I still have 

 the highest opinion of a Purdey of lo-bore, which burnt five 

 or six drachms of fine powder, and at short distances drove 

 its ball home. This gun did nearly all my work. I had 

 besides a 12 -bore Westley-Richards, a light rifle, and a heavy 

 single-barrelled one carrying two-oz. belted balls. This last 

 was a beast of a tool, and once I never gave it a second 

 chance nearly cost me my life, by stinging, without seriously 

 wounding, a bull elephant. The infuriated brute charged nine 

 or ten times wickedly, and the number might have been 

 doubled had I not at last got hold of the Purdey, when he 

 fell to the first shot. We had no breech-loaders in those days, 

 save the disconnecting one, and that would have been useless, 

 for we had to load as we galloped through the thick bush, and the 

 stock and barrel would soon have been wrenched asunder or so 

 strained as to prevent their coming accurately into contact 

 again. 



The Purdey gun has a second history which gives it more 

 value in my eyes than the good work it did for me. I lent it 



I. D 



