THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 263 



Masailand. Von Koppenfels, the explorer, 

 was another of the African buffalo's victims, 

 and Mr. de Fries was badly gored by one, but 

 recovered. Two very sad cases of sportsmen 

 being killed by buffalo occurred in 1876 and 

 1889. I n tne fi rst of these, Mr. Robert Rus- 

 sell was killed while on a hunting expedition 

 with his friend, Mr. Guy Dawnay, while in the 

 second, Mr. Dawnay himself fell a victim to 

 a wounded bull of the same species. The 

 circumstances of these tragedies were not quite 

 the same. It seems that Russell wounded his 

 buffalo in open ground, with not even a tree 

 handy in case of a sudden charge. The charge 

 came and was, unfortunately, fatal, for by the 

 time Dawnay could get to the spot there lay 

 his friend and the buffalo side by side and both 

 dead. Thirteen years later, unwarned by his 

 friend's fate, poor Dawnay also paid the 

 supreme penalty of shikar. Having followed 

 up a wounded buffalo in thick bush, under the 

 shadow of Kilimanjaro, he was gored by the 

 crafty brute, which had kept quite still in the 

 high grass, never moving till he had passed 

 its hiding-place, when it suddenly rushed out 

 at him. Curiously enough, he had often been 

 heard to express the conviction, after a very 

 wide experience of big game in both Africa 

 and India, that of all wild animals the African 

 buffalo was the most dangerous ! It seems a 



