CHAPTER XVIII. 
4 
THE ROAN ANTELOPE. 
So far was heard the mighty knell 
The stag sprung up on Cheviot’s Fell, 
Spread his broad nostrils to the wind, 
fe Listed before, aside, behind, 
Then couched him down beside the hind, 
And quaked amid the mountain fern 
To hear that sound so dull and stern, 
Hark! along the blue mountain’s furrowed side the boom of a rifle rolls in prolonged echoes, until at last it has died 
away in the north like distant thunder ! Undisturbed heretofore even by the voice of man, these silent solitudes have rever- 
berated for, the first time to the report of his death-dealing eile. Again the stillness of ages has sunk upon the wilder: 
ness. The lenigthettie shadows cast by a few straggling trees have proclaimed the near approach of evening. The sun already 
painting those distant hill-tops with his parting rays, is flinging his last ‘golden beams over the plain beneath, where the _face 
of nature, ‘ 
Untouched as yet by any meaneF hand 
— 
Than His who made it, 
is clad in a broad carpet of green, and enamelled a clusters of brilliant wild flowers, that scent the pure air with their 
varied perfume. ' 4 , 
Reader, thou art standing on the elevated downs near the source of the willowed Limpopo, and art looking up one 
of those lone glades that stretch along the base of the mountains of Cashan. * 
Tt ia a barren scene and wild, 
Where naked cliffs are rudely piled; 
But evér and anon between ~ + 
Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green — : ’ 
Yon solitary .hunter, bronzed and bebearded, is advancing with noiseless tread up the shadowed side of that verdant knoll— 
his body crouched alkaoat to the ground, and his trusty rifle trailing at his side. He has sunk on his hands and knees, 
and deny removed his cap, is stealing upon all fours, and raising his eyes inch by inch above 'the crest of the ridge. 
To him nothing is yet ‘visible on the other side, save the scimitar-shaped horns belonging to ‘that sturdy rose-coloured buck, 
which, shaking, its great piebald head, is idly lying im the grass, flapping its long asinine ears, and whisking its tail to 
_drive away the flies. Ever and anon, however, the glorious fellow looks up as though he suspected treachery, and sniffing 
about him with expanded nostrils, seems searching for some taint in the atmosphere. Presently a herd of females —his 
hitherto, concealed companions — emerging from a broad ravine, draw closer together, and having gazed around in evident 
mistrust, begin to put themselves in motion. Springing suddenly upon his feet, and tossing his pied head in defiance, their 
desert-loving lord tanters heavily to the brow of ‘the opposite eminence, and facing quickly about, erects himself to his full 
and towering proportions ; whilst his seraglio, also crowning the hill, and wheeling their ranks? behind the flag of their 
proud leader, stand with curious gaze,—their shadowy forms looming like sculptured monuments on the blue sky line. 
The opportunity is favourable to the hunter. » Quickly laying his trusty weapon in the crotch of a wooden rest 
which has hitherto served him as a. staff, and setting cautiously the hairtrigeer, he directs the heavy barrels at the fair 
‘and inviting mark offered by the point of the bull Gemsbok’s shoulder. Crash flies the bullet through the hard bone, and 
away it spins from out of the opposite flank. Many an aged rock around is still ringing to the clangour, as the ‘affrighted 
herd go racing over the naked slope, forcing with them their erippled chief, who, frequently’ catching his punctured side — 
now fast changing from couleur de rose to crimson—first pauses a moment in the hollow, then hangs his sick head and 
- follows mournfully in their rear. Reloading, and advancing rapidly upon the blood drops with which the ground is freely 
bespattered, with fluttering heart the hunter now patises on the summit of the knoll, and having examined the extent of the 
damage through a telescope, returns it despondingly to his pocket, and sighs for another hour of daylight. He is far 
from his wild bivouac—already is the sun below the Western horizon —evening is closing fast—the stars are beginning 
to peep out; and whilst the dusky mountains are each moment ne larger and larger in the gloom, the first melan-’ 
choly shriek of a solitary jackal has been quickly responded from the dim valley by the protracted and dreary yell of 
hundreds. Although the drooping quarry is fréquently turning to gaze at its shattered shoulder and bleeding flank, there 
ie 
