15 
over the boundless landscape like “ cattle grazing upon a thonsand hills,” they impart to the sylvan scene a truly pastoral effect. Ata 
single coup d'wil, may be seen mixed multitudes of those inseparable friends the Kokoon and Burchell’s Zebra—the Damon and Pythias 
of the brute creation—interspersed with gaily painted groups of the Hartebeest and Sassaybe, both seeming to have just escaped from 
the hands of the sign dauber. Some are quietly cropping the short grass, and others are huddled together beneath the shadow cast by 
some tall umbrella-shaped mokaala, the tree that forms the favourite food of the stately Giraffe. From the spreading boughs of this 
magnificent species of acacia, the only approach to a tree which may be scen im these regions, dangle clusters of evergreen mistletoe, 
sparkling with scarlet berries. And under the deep shadow cast. on the snuny landscape by yonder clamp, the twisted branches of which 
literally groan under the weight of the huge haystack-looking nests of the industrious little republican bird,* stand the sombre and 
massive figures of a pair of unwieldy Elands, indolently defending their sleek, pursy sides from the buzzing persecutions of a host of 
yellow-bodied cattle flies, or leisurely chewing the cud in the midst of a knot of recumbent Gnoos, whose high humps peer above their 
elliptical horns. Mixed squads of Kokoons and Zebras are practising their wild gambols over the level plain—kicking, frolicking, 
butting, and pursuing each other with untiring perseverance, Here a pair of exasperated combatants are engaged in a deadly joust, in 
the presence of a group of dames, who, as of old, will bestow their favours on the most valiant. Battering their hard fronts against each 
other, tossing their curled manes aloft, and lashing their swarthy sides with their streaming tails, their fierce little round eyes glisten the 
while, like sparks of fire beneath their shaggy forelocks. Umpire like, on one side of the scene of this gentle passage of arms, behold a 
few solitary bulls at gaze, posted apparently as sentinels, and standing at attention full to the front, their dark eyes glancing wildly from 
the duellists to the enemy, and a deep hollow moan occasionally escaping from their innermost recesses. The human foe still approaches, 
and is observed to be armed with weapons of offence! Up go their taper heels with a sideling flourish, the signal for the cessation of in- 
testine hostilities, and for an indiscriminate retreat. With their high Roman noses almost raking the earth, sauve qui peut, away they 
scour in headlong haste, turning wp the sand by bushels-fall. Now the sleek variegated coats of a well-drilled troop of Burchell’s 
Zebras glisten in the rays of the sun as they charge furiously past in close squadron—at one moment obscured under the gloom of an 
avenue of spreading mokaala trees—at the next emerging in unbroken files, followed by a smoke-like pillar of dust, which traces their 
serpentine course long after they have disappeared over the brow of yon gentle eminence. Crack goes the rifle, and the leading Gnoo of 
the next sable section, arrested in full career, cuts three or four perfect summersets, measures his shaggy length npon the ground, and is 
trampled underfoot of his thronging companions, Troop upon troop now pour in from every quarter, and continue to join each other, 
until the whole plain seems literally alive ; and thousands still bearing down from every pomt of the compass, a vast extent of country, 
which presently becomes chequered white and black with their congregated masses, at length presents the appearance of a moving mass 
of game. The clatter of their hoofs becomes perfectly astounding, and can be compared to nothing but the din of a tremendous charge 
ot cavalry, or the rushing of a mighty tempest. Their incredible numbers so impede their onward progress, that the horseman expe- 
riences no difficulty in closing with the motley band. As the panic caused by the repeated reports of his rifle increases, the rear ranks 
pressing tumultuously upon the heels of the leaders of the retreating phalanx, cause indescribable confusion. Dense elonds of dust 
hover over them, and the long necks of troops of ostriches are to be seen, towering above the heads of their less gigantic neighbours, 
and sailing past with astonishing rapidity. Groups of purple Sassaybes, and brilliant red and yellow Hartebeests, charging down from 
every direction, likewise lend their aid—whilst a host of hungry vultures, which, wheeling in airy circlets like small specks in the firma- 
ment, have been gradually descending, and now stoop with the velocity of lightning as each succeeding flash of the deadly tube gives 
token of prey—serve to complete a picture which must be seen to be understood, and which beggars all attempt at description. 
“ Rolling and blackening, swarms succeeding swarms, 
With decper murmurs and more hoarse alarms, 
Dusky they spread, in close embodied crowds, 
And o'er the yales descend in living clouds,"’ 
It was on the banks of the Meritsane, south of the twenty-sixth parallel of latitude, that we first witnessed one of these grand 
anc imposing spectacles. Countless herds, which had congregated from every quarter to drink of the stagnant waters of that river, lite- 
rally covered the wide extended landscape for many miles, nor could the numbers assembled have fallen short of fifteen or twenty 
thousand. “ You should have seen this ground ten years ago,” is the observation which usually grates on tle ear of the disappointed 
sportsman who visits some boasted hunting grounds in India, only to find it tenantless; and so little game had been seen by our party 
previous to reaching this river, that we were strongly tempted to treat the accounts that had been given of its abundance, as altogether 
fabulous. With this noble panorama, however, we opened our campaign agaist the African anna. <A host of famished savages scoured 
in our wake, dexterously despatching the wounded animals, as they fell, by a touch on the spine with the point of an assegal—hastily 
covering up the carcases with thorn branches, to secure them from the voracity of the impatient vultures, which stooped in myriads, aud 
seeming utterly heedless of the presence of man, plucked out the eyes of the yet living victims. Never perhaps has there been wit- 
nessed such an onslaught since the days 
“When Nimrod bolt 
That mighty hunter, first made war on bensts, 
And staincd the woodland green with) purple dye,” 
Although the Kokoon instantly disappeared after we had crossed the Likwa on our return to the Colony, it was more or less 
abundant throughout owr northern perigrinations. On the grassy slopes that form the environs of the Cashan mountains, large herds 
were constantly to be seen, and from nearly our last encampment on the willow-grown Limpopo, only a few miles south of the tropic, a 
large troop of them—pursued through a valley by an infuriated Rhinoceros, which had been worried almost to madness by the peppering 
* Lovie Socia ; the Social Grosbeak. 
