104 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
and are so much more at your ease, and your attention for 
everything that surrounds you is so much more free. 
On horseback your whole day is a pleasure to you, mind 
and body, whereas on your legs it is often a wearisome, un- 
successful tramp. Men going into Africa for shooting should 
be very careful in the selection of their mounts, and get the 
aid of some local friend or trusty acquaintance in their pur- 
chase, remembering always that five good horses are worth 
ten moderate ones and five brutes. For aseason’s shooting eight 
to ten trustworthy animals, and five not quite so costly for your 
after-rider, will, with luck, be an ample provision. The number 
seems large, but there are accidents, sore backs, hard fare, and 
hard work to be taken into account. You may sometimes do 
with fewer no doubt, but there ought to be a margin for loss. 
Men who go to Africa with the idea that the game will come 
to them to be shot will find their mistake-; ‘ Dilly, dilly, come 
and be killed’ is not sufficient to fetch the African fauna. 
Among my horses, I had many unbroken for riding ; they 
had, I fancy, all been driven. I once bougkt a whole team— 
eight—out of a waggon. On my way up from the colony to 
the shooting ground I used to amuse myself by breaking them 
in. The method was expeditious, though primitive. We 
saddled a quiet old stager and tied the young one to him, 
neck to neck, allowing about two feet length of coupling, by the 
riem, or leathern thong which every horse habitually wears for 
knee haltering, or fastening up at night. By degrees, with coax- 
ing, we got the saddle and bridle on, and then I mounted the 
young one over the back of the old, on which John or one of the © 
Hottentots got astride. There was a little trouble at first with 
the pupil, but as he could neither rear nor back, and might 
kick as long as he liked, I sat: quietly until he was tired, and 
then, putting the broken horse into a slow walk, persuaded him 
to follow suit ; he generally did so, and after a mile or two, _ 
when he had become accustomed to my weight and move- 
ment in the saddle, I lengthened the coupling, little by little, 
and once or twice I have cast it off altogether and let him 
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