96 Great and Small Game of Africa 



The friends with whom I was staying wisely refrained from shooting 

 them or allowing them to be shot at, and they were occasionally 

 encountered on some of our expeditions after the mountain antelope. I 

 came suddenly upon them one day, in company with a Kaffir hunter, tar 

 up amongst the mountains, amid some of the wildest scenery of the 

 district. We stood within a couple of hundred yards or so, and had ample 

 opportunity to observe the troop, before the stallion, standing sentinel, 

 discovered us. Presently our presence was observed, and at a wild neigh 

 from the stallion the zebras galloped away over the mountain shoulder and 

 were lost to view. On another occasion I saw them descending a steep 

 mountain side, which they clattered down with the greatest apparent ease. 

 As a rule they were most suspicious beasts, extremely hard to get near, and 

 even if we had wanted to shoot specimens, which we did not, we should 

 have had some desperately hard and tough stalking to bring one to bag. 

 The history of this particular troop, which I carefully followed, was a 

 somewhat singular one. The animals occasionally wandered over the 

 mountains beyond our boundaries on to adjacent farms, where they were 

 shot at by Dutch farmers. Their numbers gradually dwindled until only 

 the stallion remained. This animal finally ran with a troop of donkeys 

 belonging to my friends, which were allowed to range the hills, and was 

 driven into a kraal and captured. He was extremely savage, and, although 

 fastened with ropes to a tree, was always ready with open mouth and bared 

 teeth to attack any one approaching him. The animal was full-grown and 

 too old to tame, and ought to have been released. He steadily refused all 

 food, but would drink water greedily, disposing of three buckets at a time. 

 The noble brute, after three weeks' attempt to keep him alive and tame 

 him, finally perished of exhaustion. It was a thousand pities he was held 

 captive so long. Singularly enough, I heard some years after I had lett 

 this district that a fresh troop of zebras had trekked into the Witteberg 

 from some other range and had taken the place of this vanished herd upon 



