ABUNDANCE OF GAME. 103 



After watching them for a short time, I selected a fine 

 old cow blue wildebeest, and fired, when this vast body 

 of game thundered, panic stricken, away on every side. 

 As the dust cleared away the gnoo was to be seen 

 standing alone, and in about ten minutes she stagger- 

 ed, fell, and died. Fifteen minutes afterward two 

 herds of pallahs approached from diiferent directions. 

 I was overhauling them, when up came two tearing 

 wild boars and stood broadside before me, with their 

 long tails stuck right up. I took the best behind the 

 shoulder : he ran off with his comrade up a very rooky 

 hill above the fountain, leaving the stones red in his 

 wake, and feeling himself unable to proceed further, 

 charged and staggered violently about the stones, and 

 at last gave in, having broken both his under teeth ; 

 he also squealed violently when the struggles of death 

 . came over him. 



A singular circumstance occurred as I watched the 

 waters on the 20th. Having shot a sassayby, he im- 

 mediately commenced choking from the blood, and his 

 body began to swell in a most extraordinary manner ; 

 it continued swelling, with the animal still alive, until 

 it literally resembled a fisherman's float, when the sas- 

 sayby died of suffocation. , It was not only his body 

 that swelled in this extr:.ordinary manner, but even his 

 head and legs, down to his knees. 



The 21st was a bitter cold morning, with a strong 

 wind from the southwest. I rode to my hole at the 

 fountain before the morning star appeared. Shortly, 

 becoming impatient of lying still, I rose from my hole 

 to examine what game had drunk during the night, and, 

 to my astonishment, at once discovered the spoor of a 

 mighty bull elephant, which must have drunk there not 

 iwany hours before. I went in haste to camp, and, hav- 



