THE BANTING 95 



down as thirty years old ; he was certainly 

 twenty, if a day. His face was very wrinkled, 

 and covered with old scars, and his ears were 

 torn to ribbons ; but there was not a recent scar 

 about him. The old fellow had probably lived 

 a hermit's life for years. The horns were mas- 

 sive, very heavily corrugated, and of a good 

 length. They spanned nearly a yard, measured 

 straight across from the inside of one horn to 

 the inside of the other, and 30 inches from tip 

 to tip. 



In spite of his great age this bull was a red 

 tsaing, his coat being of a faded red, with no 

 grey about him, except on his face and stockings, 

 which were of a dirty white almost approaching 

 ash colour. The patch on the buttocks was 

 quite white — as is the case with all tsaing, of 

 whatever age. A solitary bull which I had shot 

 a few days previously, though much younger 

 than this animal, was considerably lighter in 

 colour, with grey patches on his flanks. 



It is instructive to note the circumstances 

 which led up to the death of this old bull as 

 just narrated. The animal's keen senses were 

 impaired by age, which prevented him from 

 seeing us, as we passed him, and hearing our 

 footsteps. The monkeys and jungle fowl — 

 probably the latter — had put him to a certain 

 extent on the alert, and had caused him to rise, 

 and so had given me my opportunity ; for the 



