THE SPORTSMAN IN SOUTH AFRICA. 69 



should be removed, the meat being substituted in their place, and 

 covered again with a thin layer of sand, above which a second fire 

 should be made and kept well alight for about three hours. When 

 thoroughly baked, the outer skin can be peeled off readily, and 

 the flesh, even if served up in the ordinar)? hunter's rude fashion, 

 ought to be sufficient to satisfy the epicurean appetite of Lord 

 Randolph Churchill himself. The fat can be rendered down, and 

 makes an excellent substitute for butter in cooking. All natives 

 are so excessively fond of it that they will often carry bottles con- 

 taining the fat hundreds of miles from the Interior for the purpose 

 of presentation to their relatives and friends in the Cape Colony. 

 Before drying out the hide for sjamboks^ the outer cuticle of the skin 

 should be cut off, otherwise nothing will prevent it from going bad ; 

 whilst the teeth, if allowed to remain without grease, or exposed to 

 the atmosphere for any length of time, will splinter and become 

 useless. The familiar grating sound emitted by an un-oiled mill 

 wheel in frosty weather resembles the groaning bellow of 

 "behemoth." 



The Giraffe {Camelopardalis giraffa). — Ca^wee/ of the Dutch ; 

 Tut-cla of the Bechuanas ; 'NgaM of the Masarwas. 



\_Spoor something like that of an ox in shape^ only much more 

 oblong^ the average length of a bull's slot being from g to 10 

 inches^ 



The Giraffe still frequents the inner and waterless recesses of the 

 Kalahari in considerable troops, and is now nowhere so common in 

 South-central Africa as in that strip of country extending the whole 

 way along the lower bank of the Botletle, it, however, rarely 

 venturing within a distance of twenty-five miles of that river. 

 Proceeding Westward, it is numerous in the camel-thorn forests 

 South of the Queba range of hills in the 'Ngami country, but it is 

 feared that its days there will shortly be numbered, owing to the 

 constant persecution to which it is subjected by the Batawana 

 Bechuanas on the one side, and Lamert's Namaqua Hottentots on 

 the other. Troops still roam here and there in the wooded sand 

 belts of the territory lying between the Botletle and Chobe rivers, 

 and more particularly where the natives have not as yet become 

 possessed of breech-loading rifles, or, what is most deadly in their 



