104 ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



ing made all ready for a three-days' trip, took up the 

 spoor with two after-riders and six natives. It led us 

 in an easterly course, first through a neck in the mount- 

 ains, and then skirting them for about five miles through 

 thick cover and over hard adamantine rooks and sharp 

 stones. The elephant had fed as he went along, and 

 we soon came up with him standing in a thicket. 

 When we first caught sight of him he was within 

 twenty yards of us, a bushy tree nearly concealing him 

 from our view. I first observed one of his tusks, and 

 then I had to dispatch Kleinboy to catch the cowardly 

 natives, who were making off at top speed with my 

 dogs on strings. The dogs fought well with him : it 

 was very rocky ground, and I gave him one deadly shot 

 before he was aware of our presence. I then hunted 

 him into softer ground, and slew him with the tenth 

 shot. 



This fellow made up my fiftieth elephant bagged in 

 Africa, not to mention numbers lost. 



On our way to camp, while following an old estab- 

 lished elephant and rhinoceros foot-path, I observed a 

 gray mass beneath a bush, with something which look- 

 ed like a shining black horn stuck out on one side : it 

 was within about eight yards of our path. When I 

 got alongside of it I saw that i*" was a princely old bull 

 buffalo, with a very remarkably fine head. He had 

 lain his head flat on the ground, and was crouching, in 

 the hope that we should ride past without observing 

 him, just as an old stag or a roebuck does in Scotland. 

 I gave the dogs the signal of the presence of game, 

 when, as dogs invariably will do, they dashed off" in the 

 wrong direction. The buffalo sprang to his feet, and 

 in one instant he was lost in the thicket. 



From the quantity of buffalo's- spoor on the north 



