were the home of thousands of guinea-fowl, and you 

 could also count on duiker and rietbuck as almost a 

 certainty there. If this were all, it would be like 

 shooting in a well-stocked cover, but it is not only 

 man that is on the watch for game at the drinking- 

 places. The beasts of prey lions, tigers, hyenas, 

 wild dogs and jackals, and lastly pythons and croco- 

 diles know that the game must come to water, and 

 they lie in wait near the tracks or the drinking-places. 

 That is what makes the mystery and charm of the 

 reeds ; you never know what you will put up. The 

 lions and tigers had deserted the country near the 

 main drifts and followed the big game into more 

 peaceful parts ; but the reeds were still the favourite 

 shelter and resting-place of the crocodiles ; and there 

 were any number of them left. 



There is nothing that one comes across in hunting 

 more horrible and loathsome than the crocodile : nothing 

 that rouses the feeling of horror and hatred as it does : 

 nothing that so surely and quickly gives the sensation of 

 1 creeps in the back ' as the noiseless apparition of one in 

 the water just where you least expected anything, or the 

 discovery of one silently and intently watching you 

 with its head resting flat on a sand-spit the thing 

 you had seen half a dozen times before and mistaken 

 for a small rock. Many things are hunted in the 

 Bushveld ; but only the crocodile is hated. There is 

 always the feeling of horror that this hideous, cowardly, 

 cruel thing the enemy of man and beast alike with 

 its look of a cunning smile in the greeny glassy eyes 

 and great wide mouth, will mercilessly drag you down 



I Ml i I02 



m 





