192 A Breath from the Veldt 



habit of evicting him with horns and teeth when they take a fancy to his 

 comfortable quarters. As I did not myself see this animal in a wild state, I can 

 say nothing as to his appearance and movements ; but those who have shot 

 him say that he has a particularly bright and shining exterior, due to the 

 delicate and pale colours of his hide, and that, like the tssessbe, it has a clumsy 

 and " humpy " appearance when on the move, though it gets over the ground 

 in a manner which no horse can rival. 



At the pool by the Nuanetsi we were left by the Basadanotes, who trekked 

 on to the river ; and I was glad of it, though they were good enough fellows in 

 their way. We had been in camp about an hour, and I was drawing the roan 

 antelope's head, when Petrus came in with a fine young sable antelope bull he 

 had just shot, and Peter with a pallah and a Burchell's zebra, whilst Tace had 

 wounded and lost a roan antelope and a Lichtenstein's hartebeest. This began 

 to look more like business, and our hopes now rose considerably. Young 

 Dutchmen are very like overgrown children, and we were all as merry as sand- 

 boys over tea and marrow-bones till some one suddenly jumped up and cried 

 out, " Kake darso Petrus peart dikkop sickter ha ere ! " or words that sounded 

 like that, meaning in plain English, " Look there ! there's Petrus's horse has 

 got the big horse-sickness." There was not a doubt about it, for the poor 

 brute, which was quite well an hour before, was standing with lowered head, 

 heaving flanks, and running nose and eyes. We all sympathised with Petrus, 

 who saw the greater part of his worldly possessions dying before his eyes, and 

 did our best to console the owner, but two hours afterwards the poor beast lay 

 down for the third time and died quietly. That night Teenie, who though not 

 a bit of a sportsman, still cherished hopes of taking home some hytena. skins, tried 

 his usual bait, a strychnined piece of meat, part of the carcase of the dead horse. 



The following morning I was lying awake before sunrise, when my attention 

 was attracted by a series of hoarse barks emitted at intervals in the distance. 

 By and by the sounds became distincter, and resolved themselves into a cross 

 between the bellowing of a jackass and the hoarse bark of an aged collie dog. 

 Looking from my bed beneath the waggon, I saw that my old friend was 

 already up, and lighting his pipe at the dying embers. " Ah, Jan," he said, as 

 he observed me arising, " do you hear the quaggas coming down to drink ? " 

 It was hardly light enough to shoot, so we sat and talked round the fire for a 

 bit, and then I started out a short distance to see if I could find any of the 

 Burchell's zebras that had been calling. About 500 yards away, on some rising 

 ground, I made out a lot of moving forms, and presently saw a fine troop of 



