SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 63 
| beseen of skipping beasts’ that troubled me. The only animal 
I really saw that night was a rhinoceros that, with head and 
_ tail up and ima terrible fuss, crossed a few yards before me. 
A sound in front, and I strained my eyes into the shadowy 
_ darkness in advance ; the rustling of a leaf told of life to the 
_ right or left ; and the snapping of a twig of possible death in 
the rear. But I struggled on for an hour, I should think, 
_ when, stooping to clear a low bough, four or five muskets fired 
together within fifty yards told me I was at homeagain. I hope 
_ Iwas thankful then ; [know Iam now. Two of my Hottentot 
servants and a batch of Kafirs had come some distance into 
| the bush in the hope of meeting me, and escorted me to 
_ the fire in triumph. As I held my stil! only half-thawed hands 
over it, the baulked roar of a disappointed lion rang through the - 
camp. He had not been heard before that night. ‘He has 
_ missed you, Tlaga,' by a little this time,’ said my black friends. 
_ *Let him go back to his game.’ They were right, for in the 
_ morning we found his spoor on mine for a long way back. 
_ Whether he had come with me from the water or I had 
_ picked up a follower in the bush I neverknew. My constantly 
stopping and listening probably saved me, for a lion seldom 
_ takes up his mind very suddenly to attack a man unless hard 
_ pressed by hunger. He likes to know all about it first, and 
_ my turning, and slow, jerky progress had probably roused his 
Two nights before this we had met with a sad misfortune. 
The oxen were ‘kraaled’—surrounded, that is, by a hedge of 
thorn-trees, and bushes strong enough to keep them in and lions 
we hoped—a mode of defence we always adopted if there 
is wood enough close to the outspan, or we intended staying 
‘any length of time in the same place ; though occasionally, 
when we only halted for the night and were distant from water, 
and therefore likely to be free from lions, the oxen were instead 
1 To my face the Kafirs always called me ‘ Tlaga,” which, I believe, means 
the look-out,” wary, like game; behind my back, I have been told, I was 
led ‘ Bones,’ from my leanness. 
