A Breath from the Veldt 



21 



pursuing their quarry, and he noticed that when the springbuck was the object 

 of pursuit it was nearly always caught, though he had never seen a blessbuck 

 taken in that way, nor had he ever heard of such a thing occurring in the 

 district in which he had almost daily hunted. 



One day in October when I was out with " Oom Piet," he put his " boer " 

 dog and a very good staying greyhound after an old blessbuck ram, just to show 







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ATTITUDES OF SPRINGBUCK IN THE AIR AS THEY JUMP TO AVOID A BULLET THAT HAS STRUCK THE GROUND 



NEAR THEM 

 In the background a troop of buck are to be seen moving up wind. The heads are held close to the ground like hounds on scent. 



me how the latter could " hump " himself, as the Americans would say. The 

 blessbuck looked at first as if he had not the ghost of a chance, and as he 

 started off he seemed to be afflicted with chronic rheumatism in all his legs- — a 

 noticeable trait in this species when moving along at their ordinary pace — but 

 once the dogs began to close upon him he suddenly woke up, and in half a 

 dozen strides he had fairly left those dogs about fifty yards behind, a distance 

 he easily maintained until he was out of sight on the sky-line. The dogs 



