MAN TOSSED BY A BUFFALO. 177 



parents of a flock of domestic animals of great value. They had borne the 

 long journey with that patient and untiring endurance so characteristic of 

 their species, and took very kindly to the abundant vegetation of their new 

 home. 



For a great part of the journeys now so happily closed, Dr. Livingstone, 

 on account of his weakness, rode on ox-back. The back of an ox is a very 

 uneasy seat, and slow and sedate as the animal usually appears, he can be 

 skittish and mischievous enough. Sinbad, Dr. Livingstone's ox, was not by 

 any means free from the vices of his kind. " He had," he says " a softer 

 back than others, but a much more intractable temper. His horns were bent 

 downwards, and hung loosely, so he could do no harm with them ; but as we 

 wended our way slowly along the narrow path, he would suddenly dart aside. 

 A string tied to a stick put through the cartilage of the nose serves instead 

 of a bridle ; if you jerk this back, it makes him run faster on ; if you pull it to 

 one side, he allows his head and nose to go, but keeps the opposite eye directed 

 to the forbidden spot, and goes in spite of you. The only way he can be 

 brought to a stand is by a stroke with a wand across the nose. When Sinbad 

 ran in below a climber stretched over the path, so low that I could not stoop 

 under it, I was dragged off and came down on the crown of my head ; and he 

 never allowed an opportunity of the kind to pass without trying to inflict a 

 kick, as if I neither had nor deserved his love." 



Before reaching the Leeba on the return journey when food was scarce, 

 the question of devouring Sinbad was frequently mooted, but the traveller had 

 come to like this dumb companion of his wanderings. Possibly as he always 

 liked to be overcoming something, the daily encounters with Sinbad helped 

 to relieve the tedium of his journey. Never was so long a journey accom- 

 plished with so few accidents. Near Naliele his canoe was nearly upset by a 

 hippopotamus. When proceeding along the shore, he says : — 



" At midnight, a hippopotamus struck the canoe with her forehead, lifting 

 one half of it quite out of the water, so as nearly to overturn it. The force of 

 the butt she gave, tilted Mashanana out into the river ; the rest of us sprang to 

 the shore, which was only about ten yards off. Glancing back, I saw her come to 

 the surface a short way off, and look to the canoe, as if to see if she had done 

 much mischief. It was a female, whose young one had been speared the day 

 before. This is so unusual an occurrence, when the precaution is taken to 

 coast along the shore, that my men exclaimed, ' Is the beast mad ?' There were 

 eight of us in the canoe at the time, and the shake it received shows the 

 immense power of this animal in the water." 



The buffalo is at all times a dangerous animal, and one of the Makololo men 



had a narrow escape from one on the outward journey. Three buffaloes on a wild 



stampede dashed through their lines. " My ox," Livingstone says, " set off 



at a gallop, and when I could manage to glance back, I saw one of the men 



y 



