132 
A BUFFALO HUNT 
[CH. VI 
bosses sometimes meeting in old age so as to cover the 
forehead with a frontlet of horn. Their habits vary 
much in different places. Where they are much per¬ 
secuted, they lie in the densest cover, and only venture 
out into the open to feed at night. But Heatley, 
though he himself had killed a couple of bulls, and the 
Boer farmer who was working for him another, had 
preserved the herd from outside molestation, and their 
habits were doubtless much what they would have been 
in regions where man is a rare visitor. 
The first day we were on Heatley’s farm, we saw the 
buffalo, to the number of seventy or eighty, grazing in 
the open, some hundreds of yards from the papyrus 
swamp, and this shortly after noon. For a mile from 
the papyrus swamp the country was an absolutely flat 
plain, gradually rising into a gentle slope, and it was an 
impossibility to approach the buffalo across this plain 
save in one way, to be mentioned hereafter. Probably 
when the moon was full the buffalo came out to graze by 
night. But while we were on our hunt the moon was 
young, and the buffalo evidently spent most of the 
night in the papyrus, and came out to graze by day. 
Sometimes they came out in the early morning, some¬ 
times in the late evening, but quite as often in the 
bright daylight. We saw herds come out to graze at 
ten o’clock in the morning, and again at three in the 
afternoon. They usually remained out several hours, 
first grazing and then lying down. Flocks of the small 
white cow-heron usually accompanied them, the birds 
stalking about among them or perching on their backs ; 
and occasionally the whereabouts of the herd in the 
papyrus swamp could be determined by seeing the dock 
of herons perched on the papyrus tops. We did not 
see any of the red-billed tick-birds on the buffalo; 
