SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 33 
_ placed them round the drawing-room, and on coming upstairs 
_ I found two young men examining them intently. ‘ What's all 
_ this?’ one asked. ‘I don’t know,’ the other replied. ‘Oh, 
a I see now,’ the first continued, ‘a second Baron Munchausen ; 
_ don’t you think so?’ he inquired, appealing to me. We were 
_ strangers to each other, so I corroborated his bright and 
_ certainly pardonable solution ; but they are true nevertheless. 
_ I have kept them down to the truth : indeed, two of them 
_ fall short of it. I am very well aware that there are two ways 
of telling a story, one with a clearly defined boundary, the 
_ other with a hazy one, over which if your reader or hearer pass 
_ but a foot’s length he is in the realms of myth. I think I had 
_ my full share of mishaps ; but I was in the saddle from ten 
__ to twelve hours a day for close upon five seasons, and general 
_ immunity, perhaps, induced carelessness. I may say now, I 
' suppose, that I was a good rider, and got quickly on terms 
_with my game. I was, however, never a crack shot, and not very 
well armed according to present notions, though I still have 
_ the highest opinion of a Purdey of 1o-bore, which burnt five 
or six drachms of fine powder, and at short distances drove 
its ball home. This gun did nearly all my work. I had 
_ besides a 12-bore Westley-Richards, a light rifle, and a heavy 
single-barrelled one carrying two-oz. belted balls. This last 
was a beast of a tool, and once—I never gave it a second 
_ehance—nearly cost me my life, by stinging, without seriously 
wounding, a bull elephant. The infuriated brute charged nine 
or ten times wickedly, and the number might have been 
doubled had I not at last got hold of the Purdey, when he 
fell to the first shot. We had no breech-loaders in those days, 
‘save the disconnecting one, and that would have been useless, 
_ for we had to load as we galloped through the thick bush, and the 
_ stock and barrel would soon have been wrenched asunder or so 
Strained as to prevent their coming accurately into contact 
The Purdey gun has a second history which gives it more 
value in my eyes than the good work it did for me. I lent it 
I. D 
