312 LARGE GAME. char vi. 



deration with the most wonderful skill ; and then to see 

 them after they have found, going at their long unswerv- 

 ing gallop, so close together that a sheet might cover 

 them, while those which had been stationed, or had 

 stationed themselves, it is hard to say which, drop in one 

 by one as they find themselves unable to make the run- 

 ning any longer ; and the chase, generally a gnu or a water- 

 antelope, pressed first by one and then another, though 

 it may distance the pack for a while, soon comes back to 

 it, and is in the end almost invariably run into. The only 

 thing to which I can compare these animals, and their 

 instinct, as people call it, is a pack of hounds hunted and 

 whipped in to by members of their own body, and combin- 

 ing in one human reason and brute cunning and power. 



I have personally met with them on several occasions, 

 and have shot three or four at different times, though 

 with some compunction, for the sake of their skins, which 

 make beautiful gun-covers. At other times I have not 

 dared to meddle with them. Once, when shooting in the 

 Free State, I was out stalking gnu on the immense plains 

 of which the country is formed, and was lying behind an 

 ant-heap watching a herd, when I saw them suddenly 

 whisk their tails up and rush away, evidently alarmed at 

 something, and in a few seconds more an old bull of the 

 same species came into sight, crossing me at right angles 

 about two hundred yards off, and from his manner of run- 

 ning seeming to have come a long distance. Keeping 

 on, he soon disappeared over one of the long wave-like 

 undulations which form an African plain, and in a few 

 minutes a pack of about ten couple of wild dogs showed 

 themselves on his track, running mute, with sterns down 

 and heads up, an occasional whimper of impatience from 



