168 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 2, 1907. 
fa . 
Gordon Cumming in Africa. 
The name of Gordon Cumming is, to the 
popular mind, perhaps the most familiar in the 
annals of African sport. To middle aged and 
elderly people, he is still the lion hunter, par 
excellence, of South Africa, the very type and 
ensample of those adventurous Nimrods who 
have earned their fame in the wilds of many 
countries. His book, published on his return to 
England in the early fifties, at once made him 
famous. Written with wonderful vigor, pictur¬ 
esqueness, and nervous force, it at once captured 
the British public, and together with his display 
of trophies shown in the Great Exhibition of 
1851, served to establish him as a popular hero. 
Some doubtless scoffed at the great hunter and 
professed to regard his daring feats as apochry- 
phal. There never was a greater mistake in 
the world. Gordon Cumming undoubtedly ac¬ 
complished all that he professed to have done. 
His feats are vouched for by Livingstone (see 
page 152 of Missionary Travels and Researches 
in South Africa. David Livingstone, 1856), who 
saw much of him in Bechuanaland during his 
hunting career, as well as by others. I myself, 
while hunting in the same country during the 
last decade, have heard from aged Bechuanas 
and especially from the well-known Chief 
Khama, who as a boy, well remembered Gordon 
Cumming, the amplest corroboration of the ex¬ 
ploits of this celebrated Scot. 
The second son of Sir William Gordon Cum¬ 
ming, of Altyre, Roualeyn Gordon Cumming 
was born in 1820. After a brief period of 
soldiering in the Madras Cavalry, the Royal 
Veteran Newfoundland Companies, and the Cape 
Mounted Rifles, Gordon Cumming, always a 
passionate lover of sport, became so enamored 
of the life of the hunting veldt that he resigned 
his commission in the Cape Rifles and for the 
next seven years devoted himself with irresistible 
ardor to the pursuit of South African great 
game. Few hunters have had greater success. 
He slew every variety of quarry to be found be¬ 
tween the Cape and the Limpopo; many a grim 
lion, scores of elephants and rhinoceroses fell 
to his rifle. His athletic figure, clad as often as 
not in a flannel shirt, a Highland kilt, and a 
broad-brimmed hat, with bare, brawny arms and 
legs, and red beard, became familiar at many a 
Boer outspan and homestead and in many a 
native village. One of the most unconventional 
and picturesque heroes of the good days in 
South Africa, Gordon Cumming’s strong per¬ 
sonality and daring feats will remain always en¬ 
shrined in the annals of South African pioneers. 
The great hunter made his first real appearance 
in the veldt in 1843, when he shot many a head 
of game on the northern plains of Cape Colony, 
between Colesberg and the Orange River. 
Springbucks in tens of thousands, black wilde¬ 
beest, quagga, blesbok, and gemsbok were here 
met with, and many a fine trophy fell to his rifle. 
He particularly delighted in the chase of the 
noble gemsbok, one of the finest of all South 
African antelopes, a desert-loving creature, 
found only in parched and waterless wastes, and 
possessed of great speed and staying powers. 
After many a desperate chase, Gordon Cum¬ 
ming slew some notable specimens of these ante¬ 
lopes, and secured their coveted trophies. The 
gemsbok is adorned with magnificent horns, 
long and straight, often exceeding three feet in 
length. When at bay this antelope is very 
formidable, defending itself fiercely against lions 
and other carnivora, as well as human hunters. 
Cantering up to a cow gemsbok, which he had 
wounded and run to bay, on one occasion 
Gordon Cumming had a narrow escape. “I 
foolishly approached her without firing,” he 
says, “and very nearly paid dearly for my folly, 
for lowering her sharp horns, she made a des¬ 
perate rush toward me, and would inevitably 
have run me through had not her strength at 
this moment failed her.” 
An Absolutely New Country. 
In this region of Cape Colony, Cumming wit¬ 
nessed the wonderful spectacle of a Trek Bokken 
—or migration of springbucks—which he de¬ 
scribes as the most extraordinary and striking 
scene connected with beasts of the chase that he 
ever beheld. For two hours before dawn he had 
lain awake listening to the grunting of the 
bucks within two hundred yards of his wagon, 
and thinking there must be a good herd of them. 
“Rising when it was light,” he writes, “and 
looking about me, I beheld the ground to the 
northward actually covered with a dense living 
mass of springboks, marching slowly and stead¬ 
ily along; they extended from an opening in a 
long .range of hills on the west, through which 
they continued pouring like the flood of some 
great river, to a ridge about a mile to the north¬ 
east—the breadth of the ground they covered 
might have been somewhere about half a mile. 
I stood upon the fore chest of my wagon for 
nearly two hours, lost in astonishment at the 
wonderful scene before me. * *• * During this 
time these vast legions continued streaming 
through the neck in the hills in one unbroken 
phalanx. I saddled up, and riding into the 
middle of them with my rifle and after-riders 
fired into their ranks until, fourteen had fallen, 
when I cried ‘Enough.’ ” A man, says Cum¬ 
ming, might have bagged thirty of forty bucks 
that morning. Further on “I beheld the plains 
and even the hillsides which stretched away on 
every side of me, thickly covered, not with 
herds, but with one vast mass of springboks; 
as far as the eye could strain, the landscape was 
alive with them, until they softened down into a 
dim red mass of living creatures.” Such was 
the astonishing plenty of animal life in Cape 
Colony in those glorious days! 
Pursuing his way steadily northward, Cum¬ 
ming crossed the Orange and enjoyed much 
sport, shooting many varieties of game—harte- 
beest, brindled and white-tailed gnu, koodoo, 
Burchell’s zebra, and roan antelope. Mighty 
herds of blesbok, almost as innumerable as 
springbok, were seen. One night in the Griqua 
country, Cumming, taking a pillow and skin rug, 
lay as he often did for game by a neighboring 
vlei. All night he felt something moving 
beneath his pillow. In the morning, as he 
breakfasted, his men brought to him a huge puff- 
adder, one of the most poisonous of snakes, 
which had been about his bed all night and was 
found sunning itself on his kaross. 
Here, too, he got a fright which he long re¬ 
membered. Having shot a wildebeest (gnu)- by 
a pool at night, he fell asleep and awoke to find 
himself surrounded by a troop of Cape hunting 
dogs, savage and ferocious carnivora, which 
pursue and pull down the strongest antelopes. 
Cumming expected no other fate than to be torn 
to pieces, but springing to his feet, he waved 
his blanket, addressing his savage assembly in 
the most solemn manner. The wild dogs re¬ 
treated at his unwonted apparition, and as Cum¬ 
ming snatched up his rifle, presently retreated, 
barking like collies. 
Gordon Cumming’s first adventure with a lion 
happened 'in this wise, in the Griqua country— 
now Griqualand West. A lioness was found 
devouring a blesbok. At first she sallied out 
at her disturbers, but thinking better of it, 
started at a smart canter for a range of hills. 
Mounted on his good horse “Colesberg,” the 
Highlander spurred briskly in chase, and, find¬ 
ing herself overhauled, the lioness subsided to a 
trot, and presently sat up on her haunches like 
a dog, with her back to Cumming, appearing, as 
he describes it, to say to herself, “Does this 
fellow know who he is coming after?” Now 
she sprang to her feet, and, showing her teeth 
and growling fiercely, made a -short run for¬ 
ward, making a loud rumbling noise like 
thunder. Finding she could not intimidate the 
hunter, she quietly lay down. All this, it is to be 
remembered, happened upon a bare open plain. 
There was no escape, one or the other must go 
down. The Hottentots came up, and Cumming 
arranged that one of them, Kleinboy, was to 
hand him his spare rifle in case his first shot 
proved insufficient. , By this time the men were 
in a precious stew; their faces assumed a ghastly 
paleness. The lioness ran forward, and “I had,” 
he says, “a painful feeling that I could place no 
reliance on them. Now then for it, neck or 
nothing! She is within sixty yards of us and 
keeps advancing. Turning the horse’s tail to 
her, I knelt on one side, and, taking a steady 
aim at her breast, let fly. The ball cracked 
loudly on her tawny hide, and crippled her in 
the shoulder, upon which she charged with an 
appalling roar, and, in the twinkling of an eye, 
was in the middle of us. At this moment 
Stofolus’ (a Hottentot’s) rifle exploded in his 
hand, and Kleinboy, whom I had ordered to 
stand ready by me, danced about like a duck 
in a gale of wind; the lioness sprang upon 
Colesberg (the horse) and fearfully lacerated 
h.'s ribs and haunches. * * * I was cool and 
steady and did not feel in the least nervous, 
having fortunately great confidence in my own 
shooting; but I must confess that when the 
whole affair was over, I felt it was a very awful 
situation and attended with extreme peril. 
When the lioness sprang on Colesberg, I stood 
out from the horse, ready with my second 
barrel, for the first chance she should give me 
of a clear shot; this she quickly did, for seem¬ 
ingly satisfied with the revenge she had taken 
she quitted Colesberg, and slueing her tail to 
one side, trotted sulkily past within a few paces 
of me. Taking one step to the left., I pitched 
my rifle to my shoulder, and in another second 
the lioness was stretched on the plain.” It 
would be impossible, within the limits of this 
paper, to follow Gordon Cumming in his many 
other successful encounters with lions. Once, 
as he lay at night shooting by a pool of water, 
he had six lions round him, and only saved him¬ 
self from the persistent advance of one of them 
by shooting it dead. Once he encountered a 
troop of four male lions, and slew two of them, 
right and left. When one remembers the in¬ 
feriority and uncertainty of the weapons of those 
days—the forties—these exploits are, in truth, 
^ery remarkable. Cumming had, in fact, an 
iron nerve and infinite hardihood and gained his 
reputation at the risk of his life times without 
number. 
