310 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



1704 and 1714, gravely informs us that these birds 

 " will suffer a man, behind the picture of a pheasant, 

 to approach near enough to throw a net over them." 

 How Kolben picked up this extraordinary myth I 

 am not aware. He appears, however, to have been 

 of a confiding nature, and although he acquired 

 much useful information concerning the country, he 

 was made the recipient of many absurd notions, 

 which he gravely related upon reaching Europe. 

 Certain it is that the pheasants now lack the artistic 

 sense claimed for them by Kolben, and are not to be 

 taken by such a pictorial device in these days. 



I first met with the pheasants upon a journey 

 from Witte Poort, north of the Uitenhage district, to 

 the coast. We had outspanned for the night in the 

 bush-veldt country, about a day's journey from the 

 town of Uitenhage, and as time was of no great 

 importance, we rose at half-past three next morning, 

 and proceeded to a broad, well-bushed kloof, having 

 here and there considerable spaces of open ground 

 and a small water-course running through the centre. 

 Our first quarry chanced to be a bush buck 

 {Tragelapktts sylvaticus), one of the handsomest and 

 pluckiest of the Cape antelopes, which we surprised 

 near the water, and secured with two charges of 

 buckshot, with which we had been prepared, as we 

 knew these buck abounded hereabouts. Half-a-mile 

 farther on we came to a broad stretch of grassy 

 open ground, whereon here and there a few low 

 bushes grew, while near the water-course which 

 intersected it the palmiet flourished luxuriantly, 

 affording excellent cover. Upon this ground, and 

 for some distance up the kloof, as we had expected, 

 the pheasants and grey and red-wing partridges 



