SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 55 



projecting rock. Unable to get its horns to bear, but not 

 to be baulked, with its long, rough tongue it licked off the 

 flesh of the exposed part of the man's thigh down to 

 the bone, and then left its victim, who died early in the 

 morning. 



The smell of blood seems to madden these beasts : they will 

 turn on a wounded and bleeding companion and gore him most 

 savagely. As I write recollections come back of scenes that 

 had left no vivid pictures in my mind, because nothing un- 

 toward happened ; but why not, and how not, now one thinks 

 of it, is wonderful. Stalking an antelope, or I know not what, 

 I found myself in an immense herd of buffaloes. The bush 

 was full of them, I was surrounded, and had nothing to 

 do but stand still. They dashed about me like rooks after 

 the wireworms in a newly ploughed field. I had the sensa- 

 tion of drawing myself in very tightly about the waistband. 

 Till they thinned out into a tail I could not begin to shoot, 

 but there were such numbers that even then I knocked 

 over six at exceedingly close quarters. The danger was, being 

 run over or butted down in the headlong stampede. The same 

 thing has happened to me, and, I dare say, to many all-round 

 shots, with elephants. How they avoided or missed you for 

 they didn't seem to try to avoid you can't tell. You come 

 out of it without a scratch, and therefore, as a rule, think no 

 more of it. 



If I were to write our daily life and shooting, it would be 

 weary reading. In a few chapters of this kind, all I can do 

 is to take my readers into some of my scrapes, and let them 

 fill in the blanks ; but perhaps, once for all, I may put the 

 abundance of the game in those days in some way intelligibly 

 before them, if I say that in most parts, with horses, one gun 

 could easily have kept 800 men 600 we tried fattened, and 

 supplied with a store sufficient to last for months. Fortunately* 

 in consequence of the excessive dryness of the climate, meat, 

 cut into long thin strips and hung over the bushes to dry 

 in the sun, will keep quite good for a long time. It needs 



