608 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
and can obtain a taste once more of a “corn dodger,” and 
a little “‘bald-face” or “old rye!” 
These are what we call Hunters in America, and such 
are the comparative conditions of suffering and danger in 
the life here and in South Africa! yet Harris, on his return 
from his South African Expedition, with great simplicity, 
enumerates it among his other hardships, that he had lived 
for four or five months upon nothing but the monotonous 
round of tea, coffee, brandy, bread and meat!!!! 
Our Hunters and Hunter-Naituralists do not withal con- 
sider themselves heroes by any means—and would laugh at 
you for the supposition ; such things are too much matters of 
course with them. Yet I do not the less respect the manly 
and dashing achievements of these British South African ~ 
adventurers, nor hesitate to deny to them in their fine zeal 
for ‘specimens,”’ the true and hardy spirit of the Hunter- 
Naturalist. I would insist, nevertheless, upon having it 
understood, as before hinted, that some things are compara- 
tive as well as others. With one moré short picture from 
Harris, I am done with the buffalo. He says—while on the 
Limpopo— 
Wild buffaloes, too, might often be seen from the wagons. 
Riding up a narrow defile, flanked by steep banks, I one 
morning found myself suddenly confronted with the van of 
a vast troop of these formidable animals, which were ascend- 
ing from the opposite: side—their malevolent gray eyes 
scowling beneath a threatening brow. Unable to turn, 
they must have charged over me, had my horse not contrived 
to scramble up the bank; from the top of which I fired both 
barrels into the leader, a ponderous bull, whose appearance 
stamped him father of the herd. Falling on his knees, the 
patriarch was instantly trampled under foot by his followers 
as they charged, bellowing, in close squadrons down the 
declivity, with the fury of a passing whirlwind, and making 
the woods re-echo to the clatter of their hoofs. 
