44 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
herds of six and eight, and when in need of a large supply of 
meat for a tribe, have shot six within a quarter of a mile, with 
single balls. They hada curious habit which helped the sports- 
man, and has no doubt led to their too rapid extinction. If 
you found four or five together, and wounded one mortally, he 
would run off with the others until he fell, and then the survi- 
vors would make a circular procession round him until the 
gun was again fired, and another wounded. Off they would 
go again, halting and repeating the performance when the 
second fell, and so on to the end. The female was an affec- 
tionate mother, never deserting her calf, but making it trot 
before her, until she was mortally wounded, when she seemed 
to lose her head and shot on in advance, and we then always 
knew she would not go fifty yards further. Though they 
were a very meditative inoffensive lot, there was a point at 
which they drew the line. I once saw Vardon pull a mahoho’s 
tail ; this, however, was taking too great a liberty, and if I had 
not been near he might have suffered, but, as the heavy brute 
swung round to give chase, a ball at very close quarters stopped 
him. We have often been obliged to drive them from the 
bush before camping for the night. They apparently mistook 
the waggons for some huge new beasts, and were very trouble- 
some ; but this hallucination was not confined to the mahoho. 
A borili in a great passion away to the east of the Limpopo, 
charged Livingstone’s waggon, smashing his iron baking-pot. 
The borili is fidgety, apparently always in bad health, and con- 
stantly on the look out for a tree to scratch his mangy hide 
against. He has, too, an evil habit of hunting you like a 
bloodhound. He is the smallest of the three, with a short, 
snubby head, and a well-defined prehensile lip. 
The keitloa, or more equal horned variety, is a mixture in 
form and temper between the mahoho and the borili ; much 
larger than the latter, with differently shaped body, head, and 
horns, and less development of lip. The mahoho and quebaaba 
live on grass, the end of the latter’s horn from its downward 
curve being abraded by contact with the ground as he feeds. 
Aesop henniie 
