Our. XIV COMPARATIVE TENACITY OF LIFE. l?g 



I have often been surprised at the widely different effects oi 

 injuries of equal intensity on different animals. Antelopes 

 and other animals of that class, formed for a partially am- 

 phibious existence, are much more tenacious of life than those 

 which are purely terrestrial. When in distress or pursued, 

 they generally make for the water. A leche shot right 

 thiough the body, but with no limb-bone broken, is almost 

 sure to get away, while a zebra, with a wound of equal 

 severity, will probably drop down dead. I have seen a 

 rhinoceros while standing chewing the cud drop down dead 

 from a shot in the stomach, while others shot through one lung 

 and the stomach go off as if little hurt. But if a rhinoceros 

 be hit on a dark spot just behind the shoulder, at a distance 

 of about twenty yards, it will drop stone dead. 



To show the fatal effects of a shock to the nervous system, I 

 may mention that an eland when hunted can be despatched by 

 a wound which inflicts only a slight injury on its system, inas- 

 much as that is then absorbing its whole nervous force. Again, 

 a giraffe, when hard pressed by a good horse for only two or 

 three hundred yards, has been known to drop down dead 

 without any wound at all. A full gallop exhausts the powers 

 of these animals, and therefore the hunters try to press them 

 at once to it, knowing that after a short run the animals will 

 be in their power. When the nervous force is intact, terrible 

 wounds may be inflicted without killing. Having once sho + a 

 tsessebe through the neck while feeding, we went up to him 

 and cut his throat deep enough to bleed him largely. After 

 this he ran more than a mile, and would have got off, had not 

 a dog brought him to bay. (37) 



My men, having never had firearms in their hands before, 

 found it so difficult to hold the musket steady at the flash of 

 fire in the pan, that they naturally expected me to furnish 

 them with " gun-medicine," without which they believed 

 that no one could shoot straight. Great expectations had 

 been formed on this subject when I arrived among the 

 Alakololo; but as I had hitherto declined to deceive them, 

 my men supposed that I would now consent, and thus relieve 

 myself of the fatigue of hunting, which I was most willing to 

 do, if I could have done it honestly. Sulphur is the favourite 

 gun-medicine, and I remember Sechele giving a large price 



