134 
African Game Trails 
jump in a tin tray by tapping on it. The 
favorite dancing times were in the early 
morning, and, to a less extent, in the evening. 
We saw dancing-places of every age, some 
with the cut grass which strewed the floor 
green and fresh, others with the grass dried 
into hay and the bare earth showing through. 
But the game we were after was the buf¬ 
falo that haunted the papyrus swamp. As 
I have said before, the buffalo is by many 
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 hun¬ 
dreds 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. 
Third buffalo bull shot in the swamp. 
From a photograph by Edmund Heller. 
hunters esteemed the most dangerous of 
African game. It is an enormously power¬ 
ful beast with, in this country, a coat of 
black hair which becomes thin in the old 
bulls, and massive horns which rise into 
great bosses at the base, these bosses some¬ 
times meeting in old age so as to coyer the 
forehead with a frontlet of horn. Their 
habits vary much in different places. Where 
they are much persecuted, 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. 
Probably when the moon was full the buf¬ 
falo 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, sometimes in the late even¬ 
ing,' but quite as often in the bright day¬ 
light. We saw herds come out to graze at 
ten o’clock in the morning, and again at 
three in the afternoon. They usually re¬ 
mained 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 perch¬ 
ing on their backs; and occasionally the 
whereabouts of the herd in the papyrus 
swamp could be determined by seeing the 
