SILENT WALKING. 161 



In time I had my separate beats, and used to draw them as 

 regularly as hounds draw their respective covers. Dress is 

 a most important part in these excursions : the trousers of 

 the country, made of untanned leather, and termed crackers, 

 are very good ; a long jacket of dark blue or green is better, 

 but a dark dull red is even more killing ; the veld-schoens 

 (shoes) worn by the Dutch are certainly far superior to 

 any other boot or shoe I ever saw ; they are comfortable, 

 soft, and silent, not unlike the mocassin. Having entered 

 a few yards in the path chosen, which should be one well 

 worn by the elephants, it is advisable to wait a few mi- 

 nutes and listen, to be certain that all is going on right : 

 the stealthy advance then commences. 



The first thing to be done is to look where the foot 

 that you are going to advance can be placed. If any dried 

 sticks or leaves are in the way, the greatest care must 

 be taken, for the cracking or crushing of either would 

 alarm the bush for miles. This may seem giving too 

 much importance to the matter ; but the case is thus : the 

 animals that live here trust to their sense of hearing and 

 smelling more than to their sight ; a slight collateral 

 circumstance, if I may so term it, also alarms their natu- 

 rally suspicious nature. A buck may be forty yards from 

 you unseen ; your tread is heard ; he takes the alarm, and 

 bounds oif, giving, as he goes, that warning whistle that 

 every bush-hunter detests. Others on his line of retreat 

 take up the panic, and, for I may say a mile at least, the 

 crack caused by your incautious tread is, as it were, 

 telegraphed. This watchfulness of the bucks, &c., easily 

 accounts for the absence of game complained of by every 



