sourH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 55 
Fas ack. Unable to get its horns to bear, but not 
to be baulked, with its long, rough tongue it licked off the 
flesh of the exposed part of the man’s thigh down to 
the bone, and then left its victim, who died early in the 
_ The smell of blood seems to madden these beasts ; they will 
_ turnona wounded and bleeding companion and gore him most 
' savagely. As I write recollections come back of scenes that 
had left no vivid pictures in my mind, because nothing un- 
_ toward happened ; but why not, and how not, now one thinks 
‘of it, is wonderful. Stalking an antelope, or I know not what, 
_ I found myself in an immense herd of buffaloes. The bush 
was full of them, I was surrounded, and had nothing to 
~ do but stand still. They dashed about me like rooks after 
_the wireworms in a newly ploughed field. I had the sensa- 
tion of drawing myself in very tightly about the waistband. 
Till they thinned out into a tail I could not begin to shoot, — 
but there were such numbers that even then I knocked 
_ Over six at exceedingly close quarters. The danger was, being 
Tun over or butted down in the headlong stampede. The same 
thas happened to me, and, I dare say, to many all-round 
, with elephants. How they avoided or missed you—for 
‘didn’t seem to try to avoid—you can’t tell. You come 
at of it without a scratch, and therefore, as a rule, think no 
more of it. 
_ IfI were to write our daily life and shooting, it would be 
weary reading. In a few chapters of this kind, all I can do 
| to take my readers into some of my scrapes, and let them 
in the blanks ; but perhaps, once for all, I may put the 
of the game in those days in some way intelligibly 
> them, if I say that in most parts, with horses, one gun 
id easily have kept 800 men—6oo we tried—fattened, and 
supplied with a store sufficient to last for months. Fortunately, 
consequence of the excessive dryness of the climate, meat, 
cut into long thin strips and hung over the bushes to dry 
in the sun, will keep quite good for a long time. It needs 
