African Game Trails 
17 
with very weak teeth) which bolted from 
its hole at his approach; gerunuk, small 
antelope with necks relatively as long as 
giraffes’, which are exceedingly shy and 
difficult to obtain; and the Gravy’s zebra, 
as big as a small horse. Most of his hunt¬ 
ing was done alone, either on foot or on 
horseback; on a long run or all-day tramp 
no other member of our outfit, black or 
white, could quite keep up with him. He 
and Tarlton found where a leopard had 
killed and partly eaten a nearly full-grown 
individual of this big zebra. He also shot 
a twelve-foot crocodile. The ugly, formid¬ 
able brute had in its belly sticks, stones, 
the claws of a cheetah, the hoofs of an im- 
palla, and the big bones of an eland, to¬ 
gether with the shell plates of one of the 
large river-turtles; evidently it took toll in¬ 
differently from among its fellow-denizens 
of the river, and from among the creatures 
that came to drink, whether beasts of past¬ 
ure or the flesheaters that preyed upon 
them. 
He also shot three buffalo bulls, Tarlton 
helping him to finish them off, for they are. 
tough animals, tenacious of life and among 
the most dangerous of African game. One 
turned to charge, but was disabled by the 
bullets of both of them before he could 
come on. Tarlton, whose experience in 
the hunting field against dangerous game 
had been large, always maintained that, 
although lion hunting was the most dan¬ 
gerous sport, because a hunted lion was far 
more apt to charge than any other animal, 
yet that when a buffalo bull did charge he 
was more dangerous than a lion, because 
harder to kill or turn. Where zebra and 
other game are abundant, as on the Athi 
plains, lion do not meddle with such for¬ 
midable quarry as buffalo; on Heatley’s 
farm lions sometimes made their lairs in the 
same papyrus swamp with the buffalo, but 
never molested them. In many places, 
however, the lion preys largely, and in some 
places chiefly, on the buffalo. The hun- 
' ters of wide experience with whom I con¬ 
versed, men like Tarlton, Cuninghame, and 
Horne, were a unit in stating that where a 
single lion killed a buffalo they had always 
found that the buffalo was a sow or im¬ 
mature bull, and that whenever they had 
found a full-grown bull thus killed, several 
lions had been engaged in the job. Horne 
had once found the carcass of a big bull 
Vol. XLVIII.—2 
which had been killed and eaten by lions, 
and near by a dead lioness with a great rip 
in her side, made by the buffalo’s horn in 
the fight in which he succumbed. Even a 
buffalo cow, if pitted against a single lion, 
would probably stand an even chance; But 
of course the fight never is fair, the lion’s 
aim being to take his prey unawares and 
get a death grip at the outset; and then, 
unless his hold is broken, he cannot be se¬ 
riously injured. 
Twenty years ago the African buffalo 
were smitten with one of these overwhelm¬ 
ing disasters which are ever occurring and 
recurring in the animal world. Africa is 
not only the land, beyond all others, subject 
to odious and terrible insect plagues of 
every conceivable kind, but is also pecu¬ 
liarly liable to cattle murrains. About the 
year 1889, or shortly before, a virulent 
form of rinderpest started among the do¬ 
mestic cattle and wild buffalo almost at the 
northern border of the buffalo’s range, and 
within the next few years worked gradually 
southward to beyond Zambesi. It wrought 
dreadful havoc among the cattle, and in 
consequence decimated by starvation many 
of the cattle-owning tribes; it killed many 
of the large bovine antelopes, and it well- 
nigh exterminated the buffalo. In many 
places the buffalo hjg-ds were absolutely 
wiped out, the species being utterly de¬ 
stroyed throughout great tracts of territory, 
notably in East Africa; in other places the 
few survivors did not represent the hun¬ 
dredth part of those that had died. For 
years the East African buffalo ceased to 
exist as a beast of the chase. But all the 
time it was slowly regaining the lost ground, 
and during the last decade its increase has 
been rapid. Unlike the slow-breeding 
elephant and rhinoceros, buffalo multiply 
apace, like domestic cattle, and in many 
places the -herds have now become too nu¬ 
merous. Their rapid recovery from a ca¬ 
lamity so terrific is interesting and instruc¬ 
tive.* Doubtless for many years after man, 
in recognizably human form, appeared on 
this planet, he played but a small part in 
the destination of big animals, compared to 
plague, to insect pests and microbes, to 
drought, flood, earth upheaval, and change 
of temperature. But during the geological 
moment covering the few thousand years of 
* On our trip along the Guaso Nyero we heard that there 
had been a fresh outbreak of rinderpest among the buffalo; 
I hope it will not prove such a hideous disaster. 
