1 68 A Breath from the Veldt 



swarms of beautiful yellow fish breaking its glassy surface. A day's halt, and 

 we hunted onwards towards the Bubye, passing through alternate forest and 

 waterless park-like country. There was a great quantity of apparently fresh 

 roan antelope spoor, so we momentarily expected to encounter a troop of these 

 animals, but were again disappointed ; other hunters were before us, and the 

 tracks were a week old. On approaching the Bubye, we found the country 

 more open, and when within three miles of the river the old hunter and 

 myself, with Piet and Tace on the farther side, entered and worked the great 

 dry sluit which runs at right angles to it. Here we expected to find reedbuck 

 or waterbuck, both of which my companion said had been numerous the 

 previous year. 



After working down the middle of the great watercourse, we formed line, 

 and beat the country before us with considerable success. After a time up 

 sprang an old reedbuck ram, his wife, and a young ram, and by careful 

 manoeuvring I got an easy shot at the big ram, but made an inexcusable miss. 

 Shortly afterwards Oom had an equally good chance, but his cartridge missed 

 fire, though a minute later Tace and Piet killed an old ewe, and we left them 

 behind to pack the beast on one of the ponies and bring it to camp. Nearly 

 an hour elapsed before we saw anything more, and I was thinking of leaving 

 the sluit, as, owing to invisible holes under the long grass, I had to scramble 

 along under difficulties, and could hardly keep my small pony on his legs, 

 when suddenly I saw Oom signalling to me to come to his side of the water- 

 course. I accordingly got off the pony, and dragged him over one of the great 

 mud-holes which intersected the ground in every direction, when a fine 

 reedbuck sprang up within a few yards of me, and going slowly over a big dip, 

 stood nicely at about fifty yards, offering me an easy shot, which I fortunately 

 turned to good account. Oom arrived and helped me to put the buck on my 

 pony, and we reached the road half an hour later, just in time to see a most 

 entertaining chase. Flying down from the bush came a herd of waterbuck — 

 six ewes, and an old ram — going, as they generally do, in a long string with 

 intervals, their heads carried well up and the old ram a good lumbering last. 

 Immediately in their wake were the two Basadanotes, who had again found 

 us, and Hert. All three were well mounted, and were rapidly gaining on the 



taining the same strong-scented secretions situated immediately behind the horns on the top of the skulls. I 

 think, therefore, that the reedbuck ram, which has no suborbital sinus, has the oil glands situated actually in 

 the base of the horns themselves, and that by this inflammation and consequent action at certain periods (July, 

 August, and September) the whole of the lower parts of the horns becomes soft and pink, exactly like the 

 head of an immature animal in a state of growth. 



