140 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
vultures on the wing with a rifle. I do not believe that 
three better men than Mearns, Heller, and Loring, for such 
an expedition as ours, could be found anywhere. 
It was three days later before we were again successful 
with buffalo. On this occasion we started about eight in 
the morning, having come to the conclusion that the herd 
was more apt to leave the papyrus late than early. Our 
special object was to get a cow. We intended to take ad¬ 
vantage of a small half-dried watercourse, an affluent of 
the Kamiti, which began a mile beyond where we had 
killed our bulls, and for three or four miles ran in a course 
generally parallel to the swamp, and at a distance which 
varied, but averaged perhaps a quarter of a mile. When we 
reached the beginning of this watercourse, we left our 
horses and walked along it. Like all such watercourses, it 
wound in curves. The banks were four or five feet high, 
the bottom was sometimes dry and sometimes contained 
reedy pools, while at intervals there were clumps of papy¬ 
rus. Heatley went ahead, and just as we had about con¬ 
cluded that the buffalo would not come out, he came back 
to tell us that he had caught a glimpse of several, and be¬ 
lieved that the main herd was with them. Cuninghame, a 
veteran hunter and first-class shot, than whom there could be 
no better man to have with one when after dangerous game, 
took charge of our further movements. We crept up the 
watercourse until about opposite the buffalo, which were 
now lying down. Cuninghame peered cautiously at them, 
saw there were two or three, and then led us on all fours 
toward them. There were patches where the grass was short, 
and other places where it was three feet high, and after a good 
deal of cautious crawling we had covered half the distance 
