138 LARGE GAME. chap. hi. 



many hills in different languages, the " Big Hill," and 

 was about fourteen miles off; and he said that he had 

 seen five of them, two bulls and three cows, one of which 

 latter he had killed. A question or two about why he 

 had not shot a bull, and the direction he had left the 

 others going in when he returned, elicited that he had 

 fired at and missed the bulls at starting, and that he had 

 positively run down the cow by sheer speed, and shot her 

 when at a standstill. It was not by any means the first 

 time that I had heard of such a thing being done, for it is 

 a common expression of the natives, when speaking of a 

 remarkably good runner, to say that he could run an eland 

 down ; but I had always looked upon it as a figure of 

 speech, and was rather taken by surprise when a man 

 whose running powers I had personally tested now told 

 me that he had done so, and enforced his assertion by 

 bringing home the animal's tail. On several occasions I 

 had had bursts after buffalo when the same man was pre- 

 sent, and had always distanced him, but he was one of 

 those wiry, tall, thin-armed and thin-legged men, with no 

 body to carry worth speaking of, who could run for an 

 indefinite period, and would be as fresh at the end of 

 ten miles as at the beginning. However, I fully made up 

 my mind to have a try after the eland at the very first 

 opportunity, and for several days I went out especially in 

 search of them, though unsuccessfully, until at last I came 

 across them in the following somewhat curious manner. 



Originally I had left camp with a considerable following 

 of hunters and attendants, and for some distance we had 

 kept together on the fresh spoor of a herd of buffalo, but 

 when we reached them, and they broke away without 



