Notes on South African Hunting. 
31 
Our Guide—The Facetious Ostrich and how to hunt him. 
thick incrustation of salt. Game is fairly 
plentiful round about, on account of the salt. 
The pans at the eastern end are fed by two 
small rivers, which have the peculiarity of 
having some pools of salt water and some of 
fresh. Rivers in Bechuanaland mean the dry 
beds of rivers, which fill during the rains for 
two or three days, and then dry up again. 
We had fairly successful hunting round the 
pan, and a short distance farther on we came 
across our first ostrich of the trip. The 
peculiarities of the ostrich are many. He is in 
England popularly supposed, I believe, to hide 
his head in the sand. This is not correct. 
On the contrary, if he gets a fair chance at a 
man, he will reverse the position, and hide the 
man, or what remains of him, in the sand by 
jumping and rolling on him. Another odd 
thing, is the way he is hunted. If one sees an 
ostrich running away from one due north, one 
does not ride due north after him, but north¬ 
west. The ostrich then almost always turns 
right across one and runs due west, when one 
turns again and rides at an angle to him, and 
so on, always keeping the inside of the circle. 
