HOW WE FARED. 225 



make forms like hares, and the stenbok, a wee thing 

 very little larger than a hare, is not unlike that animal 

 in flavour. 



As for " poor Wat " himself, the uncanny reputation 

 which in all lands he seems so unjustly to have acquired 

 is here intensified; and among Boers, Kaffirs, and 

 Hottentots he is the object of so superstitious a dread 

 that none will venture to eat him. His inoffensive 

 little body is firmly believed to be tenanted by the 

 spirits of dead-and-gone relatives and friends; and even 

 Phillis, by no means a dainty feeder to whom a good 

 epidemic of fowl-sickness is a welcome harvest, and the 

 sudden and fatal apoplectic fit of the fattest turkey the 

 occasion of a right royal feast and long-remembered red- 

 letter day, is indignant and insulted if you offer her 

 what is left of a particularly delicious jugged hare. To 

 have lent a hand in cooking the unholy beast was 

 sacrilege enough, but there her not over-sensitive con- 

 science draws the line. Most uncanny of all the hares 

 is the springhaas. This creature, with dispropor- 

 tionately long hind-legs and kangaroo -like mode of pro- 

 gression, is never seen in the daytime, and can only be 

 shot on moonlight nights. 



The best game birds of the Karroo are those of the 

 bustard tribe. Of the great bustard, or paauw, there 

 are two kinds ; one, a gigantic bird, sometimes weighing 

 as much as seventy pounds. In hunting the paauw 

 as in stalking the wily mosquito your first and 

 special care must be not to let the object of your chase 

 see you looking at him. With well-acted unconscious- 



