96 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



us into life, unheard, unseen before. I rode up to the edge, 

 it was a mass of struggling buffaloes jammed together. The 

 outside ones, startled by the shot, and having got sight of our 

 party, bore back upon the main body ; hoof and horn, horn 

 and hoof, rattled one against another, and for some distance 

 I rode parallel with a heaving stream of wild life. I cannot 

 pretend with any accuracy to guess their numbers, but there 

 must have been thousands, for they were packed together like 

 the pictures of American bison, and any number of ' braves ' 

 might have walked over their backs, so far as I could see, for 

 any distance. In the moonlight, I could only, to be sure, 

 make out my side of this seething river. 



Two marches from the junction of the Marique we found 

 elephants in such large herds that we halted a week or ten 

 days, and the ivory as it was brought in was piled up under my 

 waggon. Once whilst here, after a long day's tracking, the 

 night caught us and we had to lie out. We found water, but 

 had no food for you never shoot on elephant spoor for fear 

 of disturbing your game, or losing your men, who settle down 

 like vultures to eat. Kafirs hunt best hungry. It was a bitterly 

 cold night, and how the men without clothes got through it I 

 don't know. I had no extra covering, it is true, save my saddle- 

 cloth, a square of blanket 3 feet by 3 ; but we made a large fire, 

 and lay all round it like the spokes of a wheel, and I don't re- 

 member feeling much inconvenience, though I was a little stiff 

 in the morning, for the fire had burnt low, and the ground, except 

 where we had lain, was white with frost. One of the men had 

 kindly roused me about midnight, with an invitation to partake 

 of a tortoise he had caught and was stirring tenderly in its shell 

 among the warm ashes. I declined with thanks. We were all 

 quite fresh and merry when the sun thawed us, and as we neared 

 our waggons we heard shot after shot in the bush around, every 

 now and then catching sight of a buffalo. I thought Vardon had 

 turned out with the drivers for an early ' battue ' very much 

 against his custom, certainly but who else could it be ? The 

 mystery was solved directly I reached our encampment, for on 



