140 A Breath from the Veldt 



and at the same moment another buck, doubtless his mate, was seen leaping up 

 the rocks on the other side not more than forty yards away. I was waiting for 

 my buck to stand again, as he was still going slowly along the rocks below us, 

 when Van Staden's rifle went off at my side, and the next moment the ewe 

 went flying down the rocks stone dead. By and by the ram stood, and I lay 

 down and took a careful shot at him, when he once more sprang up quickly 

 and disappeared out of sight. After picking up Oom's ewe we were nearly 

 another hour before we found my buck, which had fallen dead down some steep 

 rocks just as he had turned the corner out of our sight. My second bullet 

 had struck him right through the heart, but he had managed to go at least fifty 

 yards from the spot where I had fired at him. All these small African 

 antelope are very tenacious of life, and take more stopping than many of the 

 larger deer of Europe and America. 



We were very pleased with our morning's sport, and, before trekking on 

 again, I spent the afternoon in making sketches, and skinning and preserving 

 the buck's head, which was a fine one. In skinning the heads of these bucks 

 the hunter will be greatly struck with the enormous size of the suborbital 

 glands. These masses of oily pulp below the eye (commonly called the tear- 

 ducts) are larger in this animal in proportion to the size of its head than in any 

 other antelope. In the Indian antelope they are also very big, and at certain 

 times of the year swell to an extraordinary degree, emitting a mucous 

 discharge. No particular use has ever been assigned to these ducts in the 

 males of deer and antelopes, but it is known that before and during the rutting 

 season they become much inflamed. 



2nd June. — Thank Heavens, the Limpopo at last ! This fine stream, with 

 its bed of sand and its fringe of great trees has been so often described that 

 I will not weary my readers with any further account of it. We arrived 

 just as some thirty transport waggons, all heavily laden with goods for Victoria 

 and Salisbury, were making the passage of the river ; and a thoroughly in- 

 spiriting and truly South African scene it was : the yellow sandbanks glaring in 

 the sun, the blue waters, the straining oxen, dragging at their burdens with but 

 their necks and shoulders above the water ; while the Natal Zulus, immersed up 

 to their shoulders, swung their great ox-whips and yelled and swore prodigiously 

 while driving their patient and willing teams to the farther bank. The sand is 

 deep in the bed of the Limpopo, and the river bank rises high out of the stream ; 

 the crossing is consequently a heavy pull for oxen ; so double spanning (thirty- 

 four to forty oxen to each waggon) is generally the order of the day. 



