21 8 A Breath from the Veldt 



the river again, we once more mounted our nags and followed them, in the 

 hope of getting another cow. After a mile and a half the bush became worse 

 than before, both above and below ; our horses too were played out ; whilst 

 the buffaloes seemed to have woke up after the last shooting, and to be as fresh 

 as ever. Going slowly over a network of holes, my horse put his foot in one 

 and sent me flying into a wait-a-bit — luckily too young to do more than break 

 my fall. The shaking, however, deprived my horse of what little wind he 

 had left, and Van Staden's being equally done, we decided to abandon the 

 chase. And now dismounting we compared notes on (among other things) 

 each other's appearance, for we had both undergone such changes since the 

 commencement of the hunt that I doubt whether two sorrier or more dis- 

 reputable-looking villains could have been found in Africa at that moment. 

 Van Staden looked as if he had been in a prize fight. Our clothes, thickly 

 covered with dust, were reduced to mere rags and tatters, and as to ourselves, 

 I think we could have given points to Job, in a competition for prize sores, 

 so cruelly had those horrid thorns treated us. Buffalo-hunting is certainly 

 grand sport, but a suit of corduroys is almost as necessary to its enjoyment as 

 a good horse sound in wind and limb. 



We smoked our pipes, rearranged our ruffled plumage, and congratulated 

 ourselves on the events of the day ; and then the question was which of the 

 dead beasts we should go to first — a point we must settle at once, as sunset was 

 coming rapidly on. For myself, I had not the foggiest notion as to where we 

 were ; for though the presence of certain trees showed that we were near 

 the river, the camp might be either up or down stream for aught I knew. 

 Climbing a tree, however, the old man discovered that we had been riding 

 in a semicircle from the point where the first shot was fired ; so we went for 

 the cow, and found it, aided by the vultures that had already gathered round 

 its carcase. Here a fine troop of Burchell's zebra, trotting up slowly from the 

 river, passed within sixty yards of us, and being anxious for a specimen, I fired 

 at the leader, an old mare, who fell to the shot at once, but recovered and ran 

 up towards the dead buffalo. A second shot, however, hit her in the right 

 place, and she dropped stone dead. Van Staden and I had our work cut out 

 now for the rest of the evening. He grallocked the buffalo cow and cut down 

 branches of thorns to bush it up, and I skinned the zebra close by, keenly 

 watched by a host of vultures, who planted themselves on the trees around in 

 expectation of a feast, helping to form a scene at once picturesque and typical 

 of veldt life. In about an hour our work was finished, and having packed on 



