346 LARGE GAME. chap. vii. 



cowards, and must have been alarmed at so great a dis- 

 turbance, and feared to seize their favourite morsel. I 

 ultimately bought the other pair of koodoo horns from 

 the man who had wounded it with his spear, and taken 

 as a whole, the three pair, which I kept in remembrance 

 of one of the most beautiful and thoroughly characteristic 

 African scenes that I ever saw, were the finest specimens 

 which I had in my collection. 



Owing to the koodoo when disturbed invariably mak- 

 ing for the roughest and most stony ground which it 

 knows of, added to the fact that in the districts where it 

 is found horses cannot live on account of the tsetse, it is 

 very seldom that an opportunity occurs of chasing them 

 on horseback, and only once have I seen one ridden into. 



I had been at a hunting party given by Prince Usi- 

 bepe, a cousin of the Zulu king, with whom I was at 

 the time staying. I had not, however, killed anything 

 during it, as owing to the immense number of men, at 

 least five thousand of whom were out, I considered it 

 unsafe to follow the example of either my host or of one of 

 the king's sons, who was also there, who both banged away 

 whenever they saw hair, regardless of their people's lives. 

 Nobody was hurt, as it so turned out on this particular 

 occasion, though it is exceedingly rare for a great hunting 

 party to pass off" without a few casualties from stray 

 bullets. 



Usibepe and I had both ridden down from one of his 

 kraals, a distance of ten or twelve miles, for being, like all 

 those of the blood-royal, a big, heavy man, he found it 

 a more easy mode of progression than marching at the 

 head of the men after the usual Zulu fashion, and when 



