36 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
FIRST EXPEDITION TO AFRICA 
Reduced from 12 st. 2 lb. to 7 st. 12 lb. by many attacks of 
Indian fever caught during a shooting excursion in the valley 
of the Bhavany River, I was sent to the Cape as a last chance 
by the Madras doctors ; indeed, whilst lying in a semi-comatose 
state, I heard one of them declare that I ought to have been 
dead a year ago; so all thanks to South Africa, say I! I 
gained strength by the voyage, and, shortly after reaching Cape 
Town, hearing that a Mr. Murray, of Lintrose, near Cupar 
Angus, had come from Scotland for the purpose of making a 
shooting expedition to the interior, I determined to join him. 
The resolve was carried out early in the spring of 1844 (the 
beginning of the Cape winter) ; we started out from Graham’s 
Town to Colesberg, buying on the way horses, oxen, dogs, 
waggons, and stores, crossed the Orange River, and set our 
faces northwards. We were all bitten in those days by Captain 
—afterwards Sir Cornwallis—Harris, whose book, published 
about 1837, was the first to give any notion of the capabilities 
of South Africa for big game shooting, and, Harris excepted, 
‘we were the first that ever burst into that ‘sunny ” sea ’—as 
sportsmen. Murray was an excellent kind-hearted gentleman, 
rather too old perhaps for an expedition of this kind, as he felt 
the alternations of the climate very much ; and no wonder, for 
I have known the thermometer to register 92° in the shade at 
2 P.M.,and 30° at 8 p.m. I was younger, and though still weak 
from the effects of fever, the dry air of the uplands daily gave 
me vigour, and the absolute freedom of the life was delightful 
to me. Just at first I had to become accustomed to the 
many little annoyances of missing oxen, strayed horses, &c. ; 
but when our waggons became our ome, and our migratory 
state our life, all anxious care vanished. Things would be 
put right somehow ; there was no use worrying ourselves ; 
what had been yesterday would be to-morrow. What though 
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