ii2 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



sadly conscious of their inability to make an effort for attack 

 or escape. I witnessed this butchery but once, and, willingly, 

 would never again. 



In the open country the Bechuana, though muffs at 

 elephant hunting, catch large numbers of animals in the hopo. 

 The Ba-Quaina and Ba-Wangketsi, especially, were clever 

 at this kind of work. The hopo is a large pit dug in a 

 favourable spot, generally just the other side of a slight rise, 

 in neighbourhoods where game is abundant, and is often 

 used year after year. From the sides of it stiff, diverging 

 hedges of bush and branches are run out for a considerable 

 distance, and the beaters, sweeping a large area of country in a 

 crescent, open at first, but gradually contracting its horns as 

 the game approaches the hedges, manage to drive slowly 

 forward large masses of antelope, quagga, and wildebeest. 

 Men are suitably placed here and there outside the range of 

 the fences, to indicate gently to the game the way they are 

 expected to take. When they are well within the lines the 

 men bear down on them, and by shouts urge them forward 

 pele mele to the hopo, which by the rise in the ground is 

 hidden from the leaders until too late ; for the weight of the 

 scared body behind them, always pressing on, carries the fore- 

 most ranks into the pit, which, in a successful drive, is soon filled 

 with a heaving mass of struggling life. Numbers of the driven 

 escape through the hedges and through the crowd, by this 

 time close up, many of them, the quagga especially, charging 

 the drivers, who, sitting or kneeling, cover themselves with 

 their shields, and ply their assegais as opportunity offers, from 

 beneath them. I should have said that some of the hunters 

 are ambushed near the hopo, and these dispose of any animals 

 that, coming to the surface, seem likely to escape. The 

 southern tribes manage sometimes to kill the hippopotamus by- 

 suspending a heavy spike of iron, or of wood burnt and sharp- 

 ened to a point, and weighted with a large stone. This, by an 

 ingenious contrivance, is fastened to the branch of a tree over- 

 hanging the animal's path as it leaves the water at night to graze, 



