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town, and their bowlings are sometimes heard under Table Mountain, and in other directions, 
during the nights. In the countries inhabited by the Kaffirs they are very numerous and daring, 
generally approaching the villages during the night, and attempting, either by strength or strata- 
gem, to pass the wattles by which the houses are defended. If they be thus far successful, they 
next endeavor to enter the houses, which they sometimes accomplish, in which case they not un- 
frequently carry off some young child of the family. Scars and marks on various parts of the 
body often testify to the traveler how dangerous a foe the natives have in this animal." 
Mr. Steedman, in his "Wanderings and Adventures in the Interior of Southern Africa," gives 
most appalling accounts of the rapacity of the spotted hyena. He states that Mr. Shepstone, in 
a letter from Mamboland, relates that the nightly attacks of wolves, as the hyenas are generally 
called, have been very destructive among the children and youth ; for within a few months not 
fewer than forty instances came to his knowledge wherein that beast had made a most dreadful 
havoc. "To show clearly," says that gentleman, "the preference of the spotted hyena for human 
flesh, it will be necessary to notice that when the Mambookies build their houses, which are in 
form like bee-hives, and tolerably large, often eighteen or twenty feet in diameter, the floor is 
raised at the higher or back part of the house, until within three or four feet of the front, where 
it suddenly terminates, leaving an area from thence to the wall, in which every night the calves 
are tied to protect them from the storms or from wild beasts. Now it would be natural to sup- 
pose, that should the wolf enter, he would seize the first, object for his prey, especially as the na' 
tives always lie with the fire at their feet; but notwithstanding this, the constant practice of this 
animal has been in every instance to pass by the calves in the area, and even by the fire, and to 
take the children from under the mother's kaross, and this in such a gentle and cautious manner, 
that the poor parent has been unconscious of her loss until the cries of her little innocent have 
reached her from without, when a close prisoner in the jaws of the monster." Mr. Shepstone 
then particularizes two instances within his own knowledge, one of a boy about ten years of age, 
and the other of a little girl about eight, who had been carried off by this species, and wretch- 
edly mangled, but recovered by the attention of Mr. Shepstone and his friends. Notwithstanding 
this ferocity, the spotted hyena has, it is stated, been occasionally domiciliated in the houses of 
the peasantry, " among whom," says Mr. Bennett, "he is preferred to the dog himself for attach- 
ment to his master, for general sagacity, and even, it is said, for his qualifications for the chase." 
The strength of these animals, and their power of dragging away large bodies, is strikingly ex- 
emplified in Colonel Denham's narrative. At Kouka he relates that the hyenas, which were 
everywhere in legions, grew so extremely ravenous, that a good large village, where he sometimes 
procured a draught of sour milk on his duck-shooting excursions, had been attacked the night 
before his last visit, the town absolutely carried by storm, notwithstanding defenses nearly six 
feet high of branches of the prickly tulloh, and two donkeys, whose flesh these animals are, ac- 
cording to our author, particularly fond of, carried off, in spite of the efforts of the people. "We 
constantly," continues Colonel Denham, "heard them close to the walls of our own town at night, 
and on a gate being left partly open, they would enter and carry off any unfortunate animal that 
they could find in the streets." From the same narrative it appears that it was necessary to pro- 
tect the graves from the attacks of these rapacious brutes. Mr. Toole's grave had a pile of thorns 
and branches of the prickly tulloh, several feet high, raised over it as a protection against the 
flocks of hyenas which nightly infested the burying-places in that country. 
The Strand Wolf, H. villosa^ has been already alluded to, and is held by some naturalists to 
be a variety of the striped hyena. It is about four feet four inches long, the hair coarse and 
shaggy on the body, and short and crisp over the head, ears, and extremity. The general color 
is a grizzled brown. It inhabits the sea-coast throughout the whole extent of Southern Africa, 
but is by no means so common as the spotted hyena. It lives chiefly on carrion and such dead 
animal substances, whales for instance, as the sea casts up ; but when pressed by hunger, its hab- 
its seem to resemble those of the other species, for it then commits serious depredations on the 
flocks and herds of the colonists, who hold its incursions in great dread. Mr. Steedman, who 
makes this statement, says he saw a very fine specimen, which had been shot by a farmer residing 
in the vicinity of Blauwberg, and was informed that it had destroyed three large calves belonging 
