170 
AFRICAN HUNTING. 
until I had broken off two needles in the roof of his 
mouth. He had been ailing long, and I bled him 
copiously ten days ago, all to no purpose, for he died 
soon after we went to bed. He was a cream colour, 
with black points. The horse-sickness is very bad in 
this country. 
19/A. — Hot a bit of meat at the wagons. John 
and Swartz started early on horseback for a koodoo, 
tsessebe, or giraffe. I went on with the wagons, 
and they came up where we outspanned, having 
killed nothing. 
I took a cup of coffee and a biscuit, and again 
saddled up for a giraffe. I rode old Bryan, a tall, 
narrow-built, ewe-necked, remarkably long blue- 
skimmel horse, resembling very much in appearance 
the animal we went to hunt, but with a great depth 
of shoulder and breadth of chest, and good girth, and 
some capital points about him, though an ungainly, 
ugly brute, and very heavy in hand, with no mouth 
whatever. We shortly met six Kaffirs, who told us 
they had seen fresh spoor of a troop of giraffes, and 
turned back to show us. We followed the spoor 
some four miles, through thorns, and very stony and 
bad travelling, ascending the different heights to try 
to see them, but always following the spoor as fast 
as the Kaffirs could keep up. I saw them first, full 
500 yards off, seven or eight of them, and, on 
whistling for Swartz, they immediately took right 
away, with a tremendous start. We made good 
play, at a swinging gallop, right through bush and 
