HUNTING RETURNS. 409 



The usual game of the mounted huntsmen were 

 the young fawns ; these they were sometimes able 

 to separate from their dams, and after a sharp ride 

 of about a quarter of an hour, directly upon their 

 trail, the exhausted animal would lie down, and 

 quietly allow its pursuer to dismount, and seize it. 

 On one occasion, the chase was a doe, I had slightly 

 wounded, but as the effect of the ball brought her 

 to the ground, she did not recover herself until 

 Carmel Ibrahim, to whom I had lent my mule, 

 was close upon her haunches. There was no time 

 to run, so she turned boldly on her pursuer, and the 

 sudden surprise of the mule at the unusual act, 

 occasioned the fall of her rider, who came down 

 over her right shoulder, making sundry scrambling 

 snatches at the mane and neck, to preserve 

 him from too hard a contact with the sun-dried 

 earth. After all, considering the vast number of 

 antelopes, of several different kinds, the wydiddoo, 

 the symbilla, and the sahla, which we saw, we 

 made but a poor display of slaughtered game ; and 

 if I had not had Himyah, who was perpetually 

 firing at distances too great to do any execution, as 

 a decent excuse for not being able with my short 

 gun to get near enough, I should have lost the 

 valuable opinion of many of my Dankalli friends ; 

 whose good behaviour was attributable, in a great 

 measure, to the firm belief they entertained, that as 

 a shot, I was the most sudden-death kind of cha- 



