284 ADVENTURE WITH A BUSHMAN. 



something of the subject on which he was speaking, and in 

 this case should certainly have been aware that snakes are 

 not rigged with a sting in their tails, like wasps, that none 

 of the rock-snakes or boa-constrictors are poisonous, and 

 that, as a rule, few snakes over eight or ten feet in length 

 have the venom fangs. The want of knowledge neither 

 prevented the Dutchman in Africa from disbelieving the 

 existence of a building like St. Paul's, nor the English- 

 man in England from casting disbelief on the mode of 

 killing a snake in Africa. 



One evening I had strolled to a kloof about three miles 

 from my friend's house, to make a sketch and shoot a 

 guinea-fowl. I walked quietly up the kloof, and sat down 

 amongst some thick underwood, where I could just get 

 a peep at the mountains which I wanted to draw. I 

 selected a good concealed situation, as my bush habits 

 had become so much like nature that I should have con- 

 sidered it throwing away a chance of a shot at something 

 if I had sat out in the open. I had succeeded in putting 

 down the view on paper, and was finishing its details, 

 when I heard a little tap on a tree near me ; I looked up, 

 and on the stem, some fifteen feet high, I saw the arrow 

 of a Bushman, still quivering in the bark. I drew back 

 quietly, and cocked my gun by the " artful dodge;" not 

 doubting that these rascals had seen me enter the ravine, 

 and were now trying to pink me with their arrows. I 

 waited anxiously for some minutes, and then saw a Bush- 

 man come over the rise, and look about. I knew at once 

 that he must be unconscious of my presence or he would 

 never have thus shown in the open ; he turned round, and 



