Still Hunting

A CLOSE SHOT

In Scotland stalking is almost the only form of hunting deer; in America and other wild countries there are two principal forms of sport—stalking and still hunting; the one practised in comparatively open country and in the mountains, and the other in those dense forests where, partly from choice andpartly because it has been much hunted, most of the big game now harbours. In this series stalking has already been dealt with, so that with this form it is only necessary to deal briefly here. The wind is the stalker’s deadliest foe, and in many of the countries known best to the writer (sheep countries for the most part) there are days in each week when it is wiser to stay in camp or hunt in the timber down below, rather than risk disturbing game when the winds are playing the devil in Skuloptin. Take your Indian’s advice, and stop at home on such days as these; play picquet with your friend, look after your trophies, or write up your diary.

To any but the youngest hunters it seems superfluous to say that you must hunt up or across the wind; to remind them of what a score of authorities have said before about the lessons to be learnt from the drifting mist-wreaths; to warn them to take care that they see the beast before the beast sees them, and to this end to be careful in coming over a rise in the ground; to put only just so much of their head above the skyline as will enable them to see the country beyond, and even then to bring that small part of their body up very slowly and under cover of some friendly bush-tussock or boulder. In eighteen years’ hunting the writer has met many men who might be forgiven for believing that wild game never lies down, for whenever they have seen it, it has been on its feet, looking at them. And no wonder, for some of them would evenrideup to the top of a bluff before looking to see what lay in the valley beyond. And yet, even after such a mistake as this, there is a chance sometimes of retrieving your error if the wind is in your favour. If, for instance, in riding from camp to camp you suddenly come in full view of a stag, with a hind or two, walking in the early morning along the ridge of the next bluff to that upon which you and your Indians are riding, say a word to your men, and let them either ride slowly on or stop absolutely stationary in the same spot, whilst you slide out of your saddle and creep away onyour belly amongst the grass. Above all,they must keep in full viewof the stag, and if they do this, in nine cases out of ten the stag will not notice that you have gone, and whilst he stares intently at the strange objects which he knows to be at a safe distance from himself, you will have time to get round and make a successful stalk. Even the hinds will be too intent on watching the other men to keep a proper look-out in your direction. And this brings up another point. Take care of the hinds and of those lean grey-faced ewes. The ram and the stag are blunderers and reckless, especially in love-time; but the ewes are as suspicious and wary as schoolmistresses, and must always be watched carefully. If for a moment you see the grey faces turn in your direction,keep still; keep still as a statue, even though you have raised yourself upon your hands to peer over and have found out too late that your palms are pressing upon the thorny sides of a bunch of prickly pears. It will come to an end at last, though that fixed regard seems never ending; but in any case, if you want a shot youmustbe still, for if you try to lower your head and hide whilst they are looking at you, you might just as well go home. This rule applies in another instance. If you should by chance come upon a beast unawares, stand stock still at once; don’t try to hide if it is a deer; don’t try to bolt if it is something more dangerous. If you stand still, beasts are slow to identify objects, and your deer may not be badly scared or your bear may pass on with only a suspicious stare; but if you attempt to hide, your deer will certainly show you his paces over fallen timber, or your bear or tiger if bad temperedmaycharge.

But you ought very seldom to run into beasts in this way, if you keep your eyes open for ‘sign,’ i.e. tracks, droppings, freshly broken twigs, and places where deer have been browsing, and if, as you ought to, you take a good long time to scan every valley carefully before you enter it. Of course you must not keep your eyes on the ground looking for tracks—this is a fatal trick of a ‘tender foot’—but you can see tracks well enough with eyes looking well ahead of you; and indeed, if you are following a trail, you will find it more easily by looking for it yards ahead of you than you will by searching for it at your feet.

MOLOPO RIVER

Again, in looking for game you have at first to learn what to look for. The deer you are likely to see will not be standing broadside on, with head aloft like Landseer’s ‘Monarch,’ but will be a long blur of brown on a hillside, with head stretched out almost flat upon the ground in front of it, crouching (if it has seen you) more like a rabbit than a lordly stag, or else it will be but a patch of brown which moves between the boles of the pines, or a flickering ear, or a gleaming inch or so of antler, or, worse than all, a flaunting white flag bobbing over the fallen timber if it is a deer, or a dull white disc moving up towards the skyline if it is a sheep which you have stirred from amongst those grey boulders for one of which you mistook it.

Over the fallen timber

A common error which men make is to depend too much upon the eyes of their gillie. That an Indian has better sight than a white man is an article of many a man’s creed. I believe it to be a mistake. The Indian is trained, he knows what to look for, and is looking for it. The average white man who takes an Indian with him does not know what to look for, and is relying upon his Indian’s eyes. Consequently the Indian sees the game first, tries to point it out to his master, who finds it just about the time that the beast has stood as long as it means to, and is on the move by the time that the white man, flurried by his Indian’s oft-repeated ‘Shoot! shoot!’ has found out what he is to shoot at. Of course the result isa miss. If, instead of allowing his Indian to go ahead and do the spying, the gunner had gone ahead, he would in the course of a few weeks have learnt to find his own game, and when he had found it he would have secured for himself those first invaluable seconds when the beast was still standing uncertain of danger and for the moment at his mercy. If only a man is enough of a woodsman to find his way back to camp and to find again the game he has killed, he will do far better to go alone than with the best of guides. Two pair of eyes may be better than one, but one pair of feet make less noise than two, and the man who finds his own game, and chooses his own time to shoot, is far more likely to kill than the man who presses the trigger at the dictation of an excitable redskin. That ‘Shoot, shoot’ has lost many a head of game.

Don’t be in a hurry when you have sighted game. If it has not seen you it is not likely to move, and if it has you can’t catch it. Take your time. Light a pipe if the wind is right, and if it isn’t the deer will object to your smell quite as much as to the smell of tobacco. Having lighted your pipe, con the ground over carefully, and plan out your stalk at your leisure. It may be that you have come across sheep in an utterly unapproachable position, lying down for their midday siesta. If so, lie down for yours too, keeping an eye open to watch their movements. Towards evening first one old ram will get up and stretch himself (and perhaps turn round and lie down again) and then another; but eventually they will feed off slowly over the brow, and then you can run in and make your stalk. If there is a good head in the band your patience will not be without its reward. Again, when you have made your stalk and are safe behind your boulder at 150 or 200 yards from your beast, don’t be in a hurry. If your eyes are dim and you cannot see your foresight clearly, shut your eyes and wait. There is no more reason why the beasts should see you now than half an hour ago. Wait till your hand is steady and your eye clear; don’t look too much at the coveted horns (as my gillies always said that I did); shootnotat the whole beast, but at the vital part behind orthrough the shoulder; and remember that you have worked days perhaps for the chance you will either take or miss in the next few seconds. Remember that a man shootsoverthree times for every once he shoots too low. Put your cap under your rifle if you are going to shoot from a rock rest; shoot from a rest whenever you can, and if you miss the first shot, do as the Frenchman wanted to when pheasant shooting, i.e. wait until he stops. If it is a ram or a deer, unless he has seen or winded you, it is a thousand to ten that he will stop within 50 yards or so to look back to see what frightened him before leaving the country. When he stops you will get another chance at a stationary object, and one shot of this kind is worth a good many ‘on the jump.’ If a beast does not look likely to stand again after the first shot, a sharp whistle will sometimes stop him.

You will hear, especially from Americans, who very often can shoot uncommonly well with the Winchester, and from Indians, who are the poorest shots in the world, of extraordinary shots at long ranges. Pay no attention to them. If you cannot get within 200 yards of game, except antelope in an open country, you are a poor stalker; and rely upon it more game is killed within 80 yards than is fired at over 200. Indians get what game they kill, not by their fine shooting at long ranges, but by their clever creeping and stalking. At the same time, there is a limit to everything, and if you attempt to get too close, a glimpse of your cap, which would only make a deer stare at 150 yards, will make him dash off as if wolves were after him at 50 yards.

Having dropped your stag, lie still (if you have wounded him only, this is still more necessary) and reload, as many a man has been terribly disappointed at seeing a deer which he considered was ‘in the bag’ get up and go off from under the very muzzle of an unloaded rifle. But your stalk may end without your getting a shot. Some puff of wind of which you had no suspicion may warn your quarry before you get within range of him, and if this happens, watch which way he goes, and do you go by another way, for he will put every beast he passes in his flight upon the ‘qui vive.’

In case of wounded game do not be in too great a hurry to follow it. A wounded beast which is pressed will go on travelling just out of range of you until night falls, even though you can see a hind leg, broken high up, swinging loosely at every step he takes; but the same beast will lie down very soon if he has not seen or winded his enemy; his wound will stiffen, and in an hour he will be easy enough to stalk again and kill.

Skin and pack

When you kill your stag, don’t cut his throat, as a Tartar would do, high up, thereby spoiling the head for mounting, but plunge your knife into his chest. This will let out the blood and not spoil the neck. If, when you kill, you are far from home, and want to pack your venison home yourself, the Indian fashion of packing and carrying is the simplest that I know. It is done thus:—

After grallocking, skin your deer and cut off his head. Skin well down the legs, cutting off the feet at the fetlock joint, and spread the skin out with the hair downwards. Now cut from a bush near by a stick about as thick as your thumb, about three inches shorter than the width of the skin just behind the forelegs. Lay this on the skin and stretch the skin over it, driving in the points of the stick so as to hold the skin taut at the width of the stick. Next cut two or three little holes in the skin of each hind leg, and sew the two legs together by pushing a small twig through alternate holes in the skin of either leg. This will make the hind legs into a loop or handle. Now cut up what meat you want into joints of convenient size, pack them neatly on the skin behind the stick, fold up your pack and bring the stick through your loop, so that the ends of it overlap and hold against the loop; put the loop over your forehead or your shoulders, and there you are with a fairly convenient satchel full of meat on your back, the hairy side of the skin against your coat, and a sufficiently soft strap of skin across forehead or chest to carry the weight. All this can be done on the spot with no more adjuncts than your skinning knife and a bush to cut twigs from. The only difficulty is that the head must be arranged as an extra pack or must be called for on a subsequent occasion.

But your beast, though down, may not be dead, and apart from the caution already given to load before going up to a fallen beast, there is another worth giving. Many a man has lost his life by being too anxious to handle his prize. One instance of a fine young fellow maimed for life by a panther whose mate he had killed, and whom he was too anxious tohandle without sufficient investigation of the position, occurs to me as I write, and an attempt of my own to turn over a wapiti which was not quite dead elicited such a vigorous kick from the leg I was hauling upon as sent me flying some yards into the scrub. If the deer had had free play for his leg, he might have done worse than make me a laughing stock for my Indians.

When you get your shot be careful where you place it, and if the beast is moving towards you, let him pass before firing, if possible. If it is only a deer, a raking shot, striking him even a little far back and travelling transversely through him, will be much more likely to go through vital organs and stop him than one fired from in front; and, besides, a shot of this kind is not so likely to reveal the shooter at once to the beast and elicit a charge, if the beast is a dangerous one, as when fired right into his face.

Don’t, unless absolutely compelled to, fire at dangerous game above you. A wounded beast naturally comes down hill, and you are likely to be in its way if you fire from below; besides, a wounded beast will come quicker down hill than up. If your beast should charge you, stand still and go on shooting. Your chance may be a poor one, but in nine cases out of ten it is the best you have got.

Interlaced antlers

But if after all your care, and even after you have heard (or think that you have heard) the bullet smack upon your stag’s shoulder, he should show absolutely no sign of being hit, except perhaps a slight shiver or contraction of his muscles—if even he should turn and bolt at headlong speed—do not be at once discouraged; no, not even if you should follow him for many hundred yards without finding a single splash of blood upon the trail. Don’t listen to your Indian, if you have reason to think that you held straight, even though appearances justify his assertion that you made a clean miss. That little spasmodic shiver is a hopeful sign. When you see your stag do this, you may be very sure that he is hard hit in a vital spot, and he will not go far. It he starts off at racing pace, he will probably pitch over on his head, dead, at the end of a hundred yards; andeven if he does not bleed at first, follow him persistently: flesh wounds often bleed more freely than more dangerous ones, and it is quite on the cards that you will at last find that your stag was hit after all (far back, perhaps), and you may get him, although the shot hardly deserved such a prize. In any case it is your duty as an honest sportsman to do your utmost to find out whether you have wounded a beast, and, if so, to do all in your power to secure him and put an end to his pain, rather than leave him to take a better chance which may offer.

The greater part of what has been written so far applies either to shooting big game generally or to stalking: a word or two may well be devoted to still hunting—a form of the chase much practised in America and other well-wooded countries.

Almost every fresh form of sport brings a fresh set of muscles, a hitherto little used sense or mental quality, into play, so that an all-round sportsman should be that very exceptional animal, a man in the full possession of all his faculties.

On the mountains a man depends upon his feet and upon his eyes; in the woods he has to place at least as much reliance upon his ears as upon his eyes; whilst his feet in still hunting are to the beginner the very curse and bane of his existence.

Except in wet weather or to a redskin, still hunting is an impossibility in any true sense of the term. When for weeksin Colorado there has not fallen one drop of rain, when sun and wind have parched the whole face of Nature, every twig and every fallen leaf upon the forest floor become absolutely explosive, and the merest touch will make them ‘go off’ with a report loud enough to be heard in London.

Damp weather is, then, the first essential for successful still hunting; but even then, when the leaves crush noiselessly under foot and fallen twigs bend instead of snapping, the utmost patience and care are necessary.

With a pair of good shooting boots, English made, with wide welts and plenty of nails in them—boots, for choice, which would run about two to the acre—with his rifle over his shoulder, and a handful of loose change in the pocket of his new American overalls, any average young man may go confidently into the best woods in America, certain that in a fortnight of hard work he will see nothing except what Van Dyke calls ‘the long jumps’ (i.e. tracks of startled deer) or those waving white flags popping over the fallen logs which those gunners only may hope to stop who habitually shoot snipe with a Winchester.

The man who is generally successful as a still hunter is he who knows the haunts and habits of the deer, who travels slowly in the woods, constantly stopping to listen and look ahead, who not only takes care to wear clothes of the softest material, with moccasins or tennis-shoes upon his feet, but who always has a hand ready to move an obstinate briar or obstructive rampike gently out of his way before it has time to rasp against his clothes or trip him and pitch him upon his head.

The first thing to remember in entering upon this sport is that every live thing in the woods is watching and listening at least three parts of its waking life, and that your only chance of success is to catch it off its guard in those rare moments when it is either feeding or moving, and therefore making a noise itself. A moving object is more easily seen than a stationary one, therefore do you stand or sit still from time to time among thick cover on some ridge or other commanding position, and watch the woods, peer through the thickets, and make certain that they are untenanted, before you blunder through them. When a log upon which your eyes have been dwelling idly for several minutes gets up as you move, and goes off with a snort, before you can get your rifle to your shoulder, you will realise more thoroughly how hard it is to distinguish stationary game in cover. Keep your ears, too, on the alert: a bear will move through a dry azalea bush, when he pleases, almost less noisily than a blackbird, and his great soft feet make far less sound on the dead leaves than yours do. Slow ears are almost as bad as slow eyes in still hunting; but do not condemn either your eyes or ears as worse than the natives’ until the eyes have learned from experience what to take note of, and the ears which are the sounds worth listening to. In time the language of the forest will become plain to you, whether it is spoken in the voices of birds and beasts, in the rustlings and scurryings amongst the bushes, or written in tracks upon the great white page of new-fallen snow at your feet; but at first your ears will send many a false message to your brain.

In the intensity of the stillness the fir cones which the squirrels drop make you start, expecting to see the bushes divide for a bull moose at least to pass through them: at night, when you are watching by the river for bear, you think that you hear distinctly the ‘splosh, splosh’ of the grizzly’s feet as he wades down the shallows towards you. Not a bit of it: it is only a foolish kelt who has run himself aground and is trying to kick himself off again into deep water. On the other hand, that grating of one bough against another which you fancied that you heard may have been a ‘bull elk’ burnishing his antlers against a cottonwood-tree, that far-away whistle of the wind may have been a fragment of a forest monarch’s love-call, and that angry squirrel across the canyon was actually chatteringnotbecause he had seen you, but because he was disturbed by a bear passing by the log on which he was sitting.

But the language of the woods can only be learnt by residence amongst them, and this is especially true of the writtenlanguage of tracks, which is to my mind one of the few things utterly beyond a white man’s powers ever thoroughly to master. Such proficiency as a man may acquire in tracking he must acquire for himself in the woods, since any essay upon it would need more illustrations than words to make the meaning plain.

Fishing is said to require patience. Believe me, still hunting requires more. Although you have toiled all day and seen nothing; although you are hot, ‘played out,’ and therefore intensely irritable (perhaps you have even a touch of fever upon you); although every log on your way home ‘barks’ your shins, and every tendril clings to your ankle—youmustkeep your temper; and even when that thorny creeper hooks you by the fleshy part of your nose, you must not swear—at least, not aloud. If you do, at the very moment that the words leave your lips, the only beast you have seen all day will get up with a contemptuous snort fromthe other sideof the bush in front of you.

But when all is written that can be written upon ‘still hunting,’ there is still much which can only be taught in the woods—or, if on paper, then it has been done already, as well as man could possibly do it, in the pages of the best book ever written by an American, Van Dyke’s ‘Still Hunter.’ I am glad to have a chance of acknowledging my indebtedness to this author. Whatever I know of still hunting I have learned from his book and from experience, and have never yet known my two teachers disagree.

There is only one word which I would add here, but it is the most important that I shall write. There is one danger in still hunting in the woods more terrible than any other which the big game hunter can encounter: the danger, I mean, of accidentally shooting his fellow-man.

Make a rule for yourself before you go into the woods, and keep it as the first of sylvan commandments: Never, under any pretence whatever, pull your trigger until you know not onlywhatyou are shooting at, but alsoat what part ofyour beast you are shooting.

Once in a while the observance of this rule may lose you a beast which you might have crippled, and eventually secured if you had taken a snap shot at the grey thing which you saw moving in the bushes. But, on the other hand, instead of killing a bear or a buck, it is much more likely that your snap shot will wound some poor devil of a hind, who will sneak away to die in anguish somewhere in the thick covert where none but the jackal will benefit by her death; or else you may do as I once actually did—hit a bear in the seat of his dignity, thereby arousing his very righteous indignation in a way that is dangerous to the offending party; or, worse still, you may (as Inearlydid) fire upon your own gillie or friend, whose moccasined footfall is very like a bear’s tread, and whose sin in wandering across your beat would be too severely punished by death.

In all seriousness, it has always seemed to me that any man who, whilst out shooting, kills another in mistake for game deserves to be tried for his life, unless he be a very young beginner—and young beginners should hunt by themselves. There is no excuse for shooting a man. If the shooter could not tell that that at which he fired was a human being, much less could he tell at what part of his beast he was shooting, and a random shot ‘into the brown’ of a beast is unsafe, unsportsmanlike, and brutally cruel.

Finally, do not be tempted to use complicated sights in still hunting. When you have followed deer under pines heavy with snow, through sal-lal bush which looks like deep billows of the same, only to find, the first time, that your Lyman sight is down, and the second time that though erect the peephole is full of ice, you will recognise the merits of a Paradox with the simplest sights for wood shooting in any weather as thoroughly as the writer does, and whilst admitting the merits of the Lyman sight for long-range shooting in the open, eschew all but such simple sights in timber.

There are, of course, other ways of hunting big game besides those already dealt with. Almost any game may bedriven, from lions in Somaliland and tigers in the Terai to chamois in the Alps and sheep in North America, and there is no doubt that sufficient excitement and a good deal of sport may be got out of the day’s work; but, after all, the beaters who out-climb the Spanish ibex (as described by Mr. Chapman in his ‘Wild Spain’) and the natives who risk their lives in the driving, have always seemed to the present writer to be the men who did the work, and were principally responsible for the success of the day’s sport. To the guns who are posted by the organiser of the beat little advice can be given, except to obey orders, stick to their posts, be careful not to shoot at anything until it has passed them—or, at any rate, at anything which is in such a position with regard to the beaters and other guns as to make it unsafe to fire—to keep their attention concentrated upon the business in hand, to make all arrangements for concealment and ease in shooting directly they are posted, and then to keep quiet. There is not quite enough in this form of sport for the gun to do to please some men, butde gustibus non est disputandum.

Night shooting is another form of sport, sometimes rendered necessary by the shyness and nocturnal habits of such beasts as the grizzly and the Caucasian ibex. There are charms in night watching peculiar to the hour, which appeal particularly to the naturalist and lover of outdoor life; there is a certain fascination in the mystery of the night, the gloom of the great woods, and the awful stillness of the white peaks; while the children of the forest always seem more natural and less suspicious at night than at any other time. But it needs every charm which the night can boast to tempt a man to sit hour after hour in the shadow, without stirring, without speaking, without even thinking of anything except the sport in hand, whilst the rain runs down his spine in a strong stream, or a cold wind catches his body, heated by the tramp to the ambuscade, and slowly freezes it. If you must shoot at night, be careful about the wind: find out as well as you are able from what quarter you may expect your bear, and take care that your winddoes not reach him before he reaches the carcase by which you are hidden. Choose a spot where you have some chance of making out his outline against the sky if he should come, and whether you are watching by a carcase or by a salmon pool, be satisfied with adistantinspection of the bait, i.e.—don’t go and walk about all round it, &c.

Bears are especially shy of returning to a carcase when they know that men are about, one grizzly that I know of in British Columbia having defeated a very well-known Indian sportsman by making a circuit round the carcase before coming in to feed. If in that circuit he caught no taint of human kind upon the night air, he used to come in and sup; but if he found that I——y was on guard, he used to go quietly home to a canyon down below, and wait for a more favourable opportunity. The tracks in the morning told the whole story, of course, as plainly as if the unfortunate sportsman had been a witness of the performance.

The principal difficulties in this kind of shooting are to keep sufficiently quiet to induce your bear to come, and to see your sights sufficiently to kill him, even at short ranges, when he has come.

Go to the spot as lightly clad as possible, carrying any spare things you can on your arm; don’t hurry or overheat yourself on the way to your ambush, and put on a spare flannel shirt or coat, or whatever it is you are carrying, before you begin to feel chilled. Take a little sheet of macintosh with you to secure you a dry seat, and if you have no fancy night sights on your rifle, you can make a rough but serviceable one by twisting white string or cotton with a large knot in it round the muzzle of your rifle, while the thumb and finger of your left hand, as they embrace your rifle barrels, may be held a little apart to make a very coarse backsight. This is only a more or less clumsy Indian device, but it is considerably better than nothing if you get caught in the dark with no better appliances. After all, a sport which keeps you up all night, and in camp without any exercise all day, and which depends for success so entirely upon the good will of the bear, is not one to hanker after.

By the way, when you have shot your bear (if you should shoot him), and when you have taken his hide off, be careful how you pack it upon any ordinary pony. A spark applied to a powder magazine is hardly more astounding in its effects than the application of a fresh bear-skin to the back of some of the meekest of cayuses. A perfect Dobbin which belonged to the writer shook his faith in horseflesh for ever by cutting his legs from under him as if they had been carried away by a round shot, merely because Dobbin had been asked somewhat suddenly to carry the hide of a two-year-old black bear.

Poor old Sam

In all American sport, dogs are used from time to time by the trappers and meat hunters who make hunting a business, and a thoroughly broken collie, such as accompanied the writer and Mr. Arnold Pike in an expedition to Colorado, would be invaluable to any still hunter, as this dog would not run in without orders, would precede his master at a slow walk in timber, regularly pointing in any direction from which he got wind of a deer, would take his owner up to it at a walk, would run a wounded beast to bay, follow and worry at the heels of a bear, and keep the camp secure from the inroads of inquisitive strangers or the all-devouring burros of our train. But such dogs as ‘Pup’ are rare, and the old gentleman to whom he belonged informed me that an offer of $500 for him would not be entertained, though his own whole ambition in life was to make double that sum to buy a farm and settle down, as at 65 he was beginning to think that he was almost too old to stay all the year in the woods. Poor old Sam! When one is too old for the woods, itshould be almost time to ‘turn in’ for that last sleep.

By W. Cotton Oswell

By Sir Samuel W. Baker

One man alone was left who could describe from personal experience the vast tracts of Southern Africa and the countless multitudes of wild animals which existed fifty years ago in undisturbed seclusion; the ground untrodden by the European foot; the native unsuspicious of the guile of a white intruder. This man, thus solitary in this generation, was the late William Cotton Oswell. He had scarcely finished the pages upon the fauna of South Africa when death seized him (May 1, 1893) and robbed all those who knew him of their greatest friend. His name will be remembered with tears of sorrow and profound respect.

Although Oswell was one of the earliest in the field of South African discovery, his name was not world-wide, owing to his extreme modesty, which induced him to shun the notoriety that is generally coupled with the achievements of an explorer. Long before the great David Livingstone became famous, when he was the simple unknown missionary, doing hisduty under the direction of his principal, the late Rev. Robert Moffat, whose daughter he married, Oswell made his acquaintance while in Africa, and became his early friend.

At that time Oswell with his companion Murray allied themselves with Livingstone to discover a reported lake of the unknown interior, together with Mrs. Livingstone and their infantine family. This expedition was at the private cost of Oswell and Murray; but, in grateful remembrance of the assistance rendered by Livingstone in communicating with the natives and in originating the exploration, Oswell sent him a present of a new waggon and a span of splendid oxen (sixteen animals), in addition to a thorough outfit for his personal requirements.

Livingstone, in the ‘Zambesi and its Tributaries,’ dwelt forcibly upon the obligation imposed upon him by Oswell’s generosity; but, having submitted the manuscript to his friend for revision, Oswell insisted upon disclaiming the title of a benefactor. After the discovery of the Lake ’Ngami by Livingstone and his party, Oswell received the medal of the French Geographical Society; he was therefore allied with Livingstone, who was the first explorer of modern times to direct attention to the lake system of Africa, which has been developed within the last forty years by successive travellers.

Oswell was not merely a shooter, but he had been attracted towards Africa by his natural love of exploration, and the investigation of untrodden ground. He was absolutely the first white man who had appeared upon the scene in many portions of South Africa which are now well known. His character, which combined extreme gentleness with utter recklessness of danger in the moment of emergency, added to complete unselfishness, ensured him friends in every society; but it attracted the native mind to a degree of adoration. As the first-comer among lands and savage people until then unknown, he conveyed an impression so favourable to the white man that he paved the way for a welcome to his successors. That is the first duty of an explorer; and in this Oswell well earned the proud title of a ‘Pioneer of Civilisation.’

As these few lines are not a biography, but merely a faint testimony to one whose only fault was the shadowing of his own light, I can sincerely express a deep regret that his pen throughout his life was unemployed. No one could describe a scene more graphically, or with greater vigour; he could tell his stories with so vivid a descriptive power that the effect was mentally pictorial; and his listeners could feel thoroughly assured that not one word of his description contained a particle of exaggeration.

I have always regarded Oswell as the perfection of a Nimrod. Six feet in height, sinewy and muscular, but nevertheless light in weight, he was not only powerful, but enduring. A handsome face, with an eagle glance, but full of kindliness and fearlessness, bespoke the natural manliness of character which attracted him to the wild adventures of his early life.

He was a first-rate horseman, and all his shooting was from the saddle, or by dismounting for the shot after he had run his game to bay.

In 1861, when I was about to start on an expedition towards the Nile sources, Oswell, who had then retired from the field to the repose of his much-loved home, lent me his favourite gun, with which he had killed almost every animal during his five years’ hunting in South Africa. This gun was a silent witness to what its owner had accomplished. In exterior it looked like an ordinary double-barrelled rifle, weighing exactly ten pounds; in reality it was a smooth-bore of great solidity, constructed specially by Messrs. Purdey & Co. for Mr. Oswell. This useful gun was sighted like a rifle, and carried a spherical ball of the calibre No. 10; the charge was six drachms of fine-grained powder. There were no breech-loaders in those days, and the object of a smooth-bore was easy loading, which was especially necessary when shooting from the saddle. The spherical ball was generally wrapped in either waxed kid or linen patch; this was rolled rapidly between the hands with the utmost pressure;the folds were then cut off close to the metal with scissors, and the bullet was again rolled as before. The effect was complete; the covering adhered tightly to the metal, which was now ready for ramming direct upon the powder-charge, without wads or other substance intervening. In this manner a smooth-bore could be loaded with great rapidity, provided that the powder-charge was made up separately in the form of a paper cartridge, the end of which could be bitten off, and the contents thrust into the barrel, together with the paper covering. The ball would be placed above, and the whole could be rammed down by a single movement with a powerful loading rod if great expedition should be necessary. Although the actual loading could thus be accomplished easily, the great trouble was the adjustment of the cap upon the nipple, which with an unsteady horse was a work of difficulty.

This grand old gun exhibited in an unmistakable degree the style of hunting which distinguished its determined owner. The hard walnut stock was completely eaten away for an inch of surface; the loss of wood suggested that rats had gnawed it, as there were minute traces of apparent teeth. This appearance might perhaps have been produced by an exceedingly coarse rasp. The fore-portion of the stock into which the ramrod was inserted was so completely worn through by the same destructive action, that the brass end of the rod was exposed to view. The whole of this wear and tear was the result of friction with the ‘wait-a-bit’ thorns!

Oswell invariably carried his gun across the pommel of his saddle when following an animal at speed. In this manner at a gallop he was obliged to face the low scrubby ‘wait-a-bits,’ and dash through these unsparing thorns, regardless of punishment and consequences, if he were to keep the game in view, which was absolutely essential if the animal were to be ridden down by superior pace and endurance. The walnut stock thus brought into hasty contact with sharp thorns became a gauge, through the continual friction, which afforded a most interesting proof of the untiring perseverance of the owner, and of the immense distances that he must have traversed at the highest speed during the five years’ unremitting pursuit of game upon the virgin hunting-grounds of Southern Africa. I took the greatest care of this gun, and entrusted it to a very dependable follower throughout my expedition of more than four years. Although I returned the gun in good condition, the ramrod was lost during a great emergency. My man (a native) was attacked, and being mobbed during the act of loading, he was obliged to fire at the most prominent assailant before he had time to withdraw his ramrod. This passed through the attacker’s body, and was gone beyond hope of recovery.

There could not have been a better form of muzzle-loader than this No. 10 double-barrel smooth-bore. It was very accurate at fifty yards, and the recoil was trifling with the considerable charge of six drams of powder. This could be increased if necessary, but Oswell always remained satisfied, and condemned himself, but not his gun, whenever a shot was unsatisfactory. He frequently assured me that, although he seldom fired at a female elephant, one bullet was sufficient to kill, and generally two bullets for a large bull of the same species.

Unlike Gordon Cumming, who was accustomed to fire at seventy and eighty yards, Oswell invariably strove to obtain the closest quarters with elephants, and all other game. To this system he owed his great success, as he could make certain of a mortal point. At the same time the personal risk was much increased, as the margin for escape was extremely limited when attacking dangerous game at so short a distance as ten or fifteen paces. When Oswell hunted in South Africa, the sound of a rifle had never disturbed the solitudes in districts which are now occupied by settlers. The wild animals have now yielded up their territory to domestic sheep and cattle; such are the rapid transitions within half a century! In those days the multitudes of living creatures at certain seasons and localities surpassed the bounds of imagination; they stretched in countless masses from point to point of the horizon, anddevoured the pasturage like a devastating flight of locusts. Whether they have been destroyed, or whether they have migrated to far distant sanctuaries, it is impossible to determine; but it is certain that they have disappeared, and that the report of the rifle which announces the advance of civilisation has dispersed all those mighty hosts of animals which were the ornaments of nature, and the glory of the European hunter. The eyes of modern hunters can never see the wonders of the past. There may be good sport remaining in distant localities, but the scenes witnessed by Oswell in his youth can never be viewed again. Mr. W. F. Webb, of Newstead Abbey, is one of the few remaining who can remember Oswell when in Africa, as he was himself shooting during the close of his expedition. Mr. Webb can corroborate the accounts of the vast herds of antelopes which at that time occupied the plains, and the extraordinary numbers of rhinoceros which intruded themselves upon the explorer’s path, and challenged his right of way. In a comparatively short period the white rhinoceros has almost ceased to exist.

Where such extraordinary changes have taken place, it is deeply interesting to obtain such trustworthy testimony as that afforded by Mr. Oswell, who has described from personal experience all that, to us, resembles history. He was accepted at that time as the Nimrod of South Africa, ‘par excellence,’ and although his retiring nature tended to self-effacement, all those who knew him, either by name or personal acquaintance, regarded him as without a rival; and certainly without an enemy: the greatest hunter ever known in modern times, the truest friend, and the most thorough example of an English gentleman. We sorrowfully exclaim, ‘We shall never see his like again.’

By W. Cotton Oswell

I have often been asked to write the stories of the illustrations given in the chapters on South Africa, but have hitherto declined, on the plea that the British public had had quite enough of Africa, and that all I could tell would be very old. As I now stand midway between seventy and eighty I trusted I might, in the ordinary course of nature, escape such an undertaking; but in the end of ’91 the best shot, sportsman and writer that ever made Africa his field—I refer to my good friend Sir Samuel Baker—urged me to put my experiences on paper; and Mr. Norton Longman at the same time promising that, if suitable, he would find them a place in the Badminton volume on ‘Big Game,’ I was over-persuaded, made the attempt, and here is the result.

The illustrations are taken from a set of drawings in my possession by the best artist of wild animal life I have ever known—Joseph Wolf. After describing the scene, I stood by him as he drew, occasionally offering a suggestion or venturing on two or three scrawling lines of my own, and the wonderful talent of the man produced pictures so like the reality in all essential points, that I marvel still at his power, and feel that I owe him most grateful thanks for a daily pleasure. Many of the scenes it would have been impossible to depict at the moment of their occurrence, so that even if the chief human actor had been a draughtsman he must have trusted to his memory. Happily I was able to give my impressions into the hands of a genius who let them run out at the end of his fingers. They are rather startling, I know, when looked through in the space of five minutes; but it must be remembered that they have to be spread over five years, andthat these are the few accidents amongst numberless uneventful days. I was once asked to bring these sketches to a house where I was dining. During dinner the servants placed them round the drawing-room, and on coming upstairs I found two young men examining them intently. ‘What’s all this?’ one asked. ‘I don’t know,’ the other replied. ‘Oh, I see now,’ the first continued, ‘a second Baron Munchausen; don’t you think so?’ he inquired, appealing to me. We were strangers to each other, so I corroborated his bright and certainly pardonable solution; but they are true nevertheless. I have kept them down to the truth: indeed, two of them fall short of it. I am very well aware that there are two ways of telling a story, one with a clearly defined boundary, the other with a hazy one, over which if your reader or hearer pass but a foot’s length he is in the realms of myth. I think I had my full share of mishaps; but I was in the saddle from ten to twelve hours a day for close upon five seasons, and general immunity, perhaps, induced carelessness. I may say now, I suppose, that I was a good rider, and got quickly on terms with my game. I was, however, never a crack shot, and not very well armed according to present notions, though I still have the highest opinion of a Purdey of 10-bore, which burnt five or six drachms of fine powder, and at short distances drove its ball home. This gun did nearly all my work. I had besides a 12-bore Westley-Richards, a light rifle, and a heavy single-barrelled one carrying two-oz. belted balls. This last was a beast of a tool, and once—I never gave it a second chance—nearly cost me my life, by stinging, without seriously wounding, a bull elephant. The infuriated brute charged nine or ten times wickedly, and the number might have been doubled had I not at last got hold of the Purdey, when he fell to the first shot. We had no breech-loaders in those days, save the disconnecting one, and that would have been useless, for we had to load as we galloped through the thick bush, and the stock and barrel would soon have been wrenched asunder or so strained as to prevent their coming accurately into contact again.

The Purdey gun has a second history which gives it more value in my eyes than the good work it did for me. I lent it to Baker when he went up the Nile, and it had the honour, I believe, of being left with Lady Baker to be used, if required, during her husband’s enforced absences. Baker returned it to me with a note apologising for the homeliness of the ramrod—a thornstick which still rests in the ferrules—adding that having to defend themselves from a sudden attack, his man Richarn, being hard pressed whilst loading, had fired the original ramrod into a chief’s stomach, from which they had no opportunity of extracting it.

I am sorry now for all the fine old beasts I have killed; but I was young then, there was excitement in the work, I had large numbers of men to feed, and if these are not considered sound excuses for slaughter, the regret is lightened by the knowledge that every animal, save three elephants, was eaten by man, and so put to a good use. I have no notes, and though many scenes and adventures stand out sharply enough, the sequence of events and surroundings is not always very clear. If my short narrative seems to take too much the form of a rather bald account of personal adventure, I must apologise; and I may add that the nature and habits generally of the animals I met with are now so well known, and have over and over again been so well described by competent writers, that my relations with a few individuals of their families must be the burden of my song.

I spent five years in Africa. I was never ill for a single day—laid up occasionally after an accident, but that was all. I had the best of companions—Murray, Vardon, Livingstone—and capital servants, who stuck to me throughout. I never had occasion to raise a hand against a native, and my foot only once, when I found a long lazy fellow poking his paw into my sugar tin. If I remember right, I never lost anything by theft, and I have had tusks of elephants, shot eighty miles from the waggons, duly delivered. One chief, and oneonly, wanted to hector a little, but he soon gave it up. And with the rest of the potentates, and people generally, I was certainly apersona grata, for I filled their stomachs, and thus, as they assured me, in some mysterious way made their hearts white.

There is a fascination to me in the remembrance of the past in all its connections: the free life, the self-dependence, the boring into what was then a new country; the feeling as you lay under your caross that you were looking at the stars from a point on the earth whence no other European had ever seen them; the hope that every patch of bush, every little rise, was the only thing between you and some strange sight or scene—these are with me still; and were I not a married man with children and grandchildren, I believe I should head back into Africa again, and end my days in the open air. It is useless to tell me of the advantages of civilisation; civilised man runs wild much easier and sooner than the savage becomes tame. I think it desirable, however, that he should be sufficiently educated, before he doffs his clothes, to enjoy the change by comparison. Take the word of one who has tried both states: there are charms in the wild; the ever-increasing, never-satisfied needs of the tame my soul cannot away with.

But I am writing of close upon fifty years ago. Africa is nearly used up; she belongs no more to the Africans and the beasts; Boers, gold-seekers, diamond-miners and experimental farmers—all of them (from my point of view) mistakes—have changed the face of her. A man must be a first-rate sportsman now to keep himself and his family; houses stand where we once shot elephants, and the railway train will soon be whistling and screaming through all hunting-fields south of the Zambesi.

Reduced from 12 st. 2 lb. to 7 st. 12 lb. by many attacks of Indian fever caught during a shooting excursion in the valley of the Bhavany River, I was sent to the Cape as a last chance by the Madras doctors; indeed, whilst lying in a semi-comatose state, I heard one of them declare that I ought to have been dead a year ago; so all thanks to South Africa, say I! I gained strength by the voyage, and, shortly after reaching Cape Town, hearing that a Mr. Murray, of Lintrose, near Cupar Angus, had come from Scotland for the purpose of making a shooting expedition to the interior, I determined to join him. The resolve was carried out early in the spring of 1844 (the beginning of the Cape winter); we started out from Graham’s Town to Colesberg, buying on the way horses, oxen, dogs, waggons, and stores, crossed the Orange River, and set our faces northwards. We were all bitten in those days by Captain—afterwards Sir Cornwallis-Harris, whose book, published about 1837, was the first to give any notion of the capabilities of South Africa for big game shooting, and, Harris excepted, ‘we were the first that ever burst into that “sunny” sea’-as sportsmen. Murray was an excellent kind-hearted gentleman, rather too old perhaps for an expedition of this kind, as he felt the alternations of the climate very much; and no wonder, for I have known the thermometer to register 92° in the shade at 2p.m., and 30° at 8p.m.I was younger, and though still weak from the effects of fever, the dry air of the uplands daily gave me vigour, and the absolute freedom of the life was delightful to me. Just at first I had to become accustomed to the many little annoyances of missing oxen, strayed horses, &c.; but when our waggons became ourhome, and our migratory state our life, all anxious care vanished. Things would be put right somehow; there was no use worrying ourselves; what had been yesterday would be to-morrow. What though the flats between the Orange and Molopo Rivers were full of sameness, they were also full of antelope, gnu, and quagga. These, with the bird and insect life, were all fresh, and made the world very bright around us. These upland flats have been so often described, that I will not bore the reader unnecessarily with an account of them, and besides, I am not writing of the country or its appearance, but have merely undertaken to try and give some idea of the game that once held possession of it; and, indeed, I doubt very much if I could convey any notion at the present time of what it was some fifty years ago, for all the glamour of the wildness and abundant life has long passed away.

On these plains the springbucks were met with in vast herds; for an hour’s march with the waggons—say two and a quarter miles—I once saw them to the left of the track, along a slightly rising ground, thicker than I ever saw sheep. I suppose they must have beentrek bokken; that is, a collection of the herds over an extended area on the move for pasturage. The Hottentot waggon-drivers shot many of them, frequently killing two at a time, they were so closely packed. They were to be counted only by tens of thousands. Formerly, they used often to invade the northern outlying farms of the Boers, and destroy their crops; and though shot in waggon-loads, they would still hang about as long as there was a green blade of anything. They were nearly as bad as the locusts, a flight of which we saw, by the way, a few days after leaving Kuruman, near the ‘Chooi,’ or large natural salt-pan. We were at breakfast, when far down on the south-east horizon I noticed a wreath as of dark smoke rising rapidly, broadening as it advanced. In a very short time it enveloped us in the form of a locust storm; the whole earth and air were full of them; tens of myriads settled, and myriads of myriads rode on clanking in mimicry of armed cavalry, and crackling likea flame devouring the stubble. Look which way you would—nothing but locusts; they did not hide the sun, but they so obscured his rays that you could look straight at him. No simile seems so apt to me as that of a heavy snow-storm with large flakes, and this uninterruptedly for two or three hours. Though the land before them was not exactly as the Garden of Eden, verily behind them it was a desolate wilderness. As the cold of night came on, they collected on the bushes in enormous masses, eight or ten feet through, for warmth, weighing them completely to the ground, and they took flight again the next morning after the sun was well up. For two days my oxen never put their heads down; there was nothing found for them to eat. The swarms pass through waste and cultivated land alike, bringing dearth and destruction, and men’s hearts fail; but the adversary has arrayed his forces against them, and through the dense flights sweep the wedge-shaped squadrons of thespringkhän vogel, or locust birds: dark and long of wing like swifts, with white patches beneath the pinion. As squadron after squadron wheels and passes over you, the husks of the locusts fall like hail. The birds are in very large numbers and do their work deftly; before long the air above you is clear, and though the evidence of the curse is upon the earth, and remains, the locusts themselves are soon got rid of, for everything on two legs and four eats them. The Bushmen follow the flights, feed on them, dry them, and keep them in store. One night, Livingstone and I lost our way, and seeing the light of a fire, made for it. Around it sat a family of Bushmen; so, heralding our approach from a safe distance, for fear of a flight of arrows, we introduced ourselves. They welcomed us, and offered us guides and a snack of dried locusts. I ate two or three, and they were not so nasty; something like what old shrimp-shells without the insides might be. These insects are bad enough in their winged, but worse in their early wingless, form, when, as the dreaded ‘foot-gangers’ of the Dutch farmer, they roll in living waves over his land, defy all attempts at extermination from their multitude, climb walls, quench lines of small fires placed in the hopes of turning them, cross rivers, millions jumping in, and millions getting over on the living raft. In both the winged and wingless state they are wonderfully described in chapter ii. of Joel.

On these choois, of which there are many, some of them twenty miles long and half as broad, the effect of mirage is more wonderful than I have ever seen it elsewhere. What seems an antelope grows into an elephant, and with the waving of the gauze returns to its actual form—a bush. By nearly all these salt-pans there is a spring which may perhaps have once played its part in their formation, or be the relic of the cause.

At one period of its history, Africa must have been a better watered country than it is now. In the driest tracts, in the waterless woods, you light unexpectedly on deep eroded channels, coming no whither and going nowhere. It gave me the impression that there had been a gradual uplifting of the surface, and a consequent sinking away of the old torrents and streams. The Bushmen and the elephants dig in these courses for water, which is now never seen on the surface, though the sides are sometimes worn away by its former action, twenty feet down. Over a large area the rainfall is exceedingly small, and in it the trees and grass have adapted themselves to their surrounding conditions. The former all send down long tap-roots through the upper soil to the close substratum, utilising them as the Bushman does the reed in his sucking-holes mentioned elsewhere; the latter grows with fleshy roots, and from the joints are thrown out delicate fibres ending in small tubers which, through the excessive drought and heat, act as reservoirs of moisture, thus sustaining vitality and enabling a bright green carpet to be spread two days after the fall of the rain. The animals, instinct led, follow the waterfall of the storm, and migrate to and fro in narrow zones. The birds do likewise; one beautiful hawk—happily called from his graceful movementMolela shoquan, ‘he flowsas he turns’—is a most assiduous attendant in the green-room of nature. But the thunderstorms are very partial. For two days I have passed through country so drought-stricken that the bushes were leafless, the twigs dry, the grass dust, the ground iron, and all animal, bird, and even insect life completely absent. In those two days we felt and knew the abomination of desolation, and so did our poor beasts.

Nothing particular happened during our journey between the two rivers. We shot and trekked—one day much like another—and stopped a short time at Kuruman, the station of that grand old patriarch of missionaries, Mr. Moffat, where we received all the kindly hospitality, attention and advice possible from him and Mrs. Moffat—verily the two best friends travellers ever came across. I shall never forget their affectionate courtesy, their beautifully ordered household, and their earnest desire to help us on in every way. He advised us to go to Livingstone, who was then stationed at Mabotsé, 220 miles or so to the northward, and obtain from him guides and counsel for our further wanderings.

We were once nearly in trouble, however, after leaving Kuruman. We had crossed a little stream called, I think, the Meritsani, and one of our men, while cooking some tit-bit of an antelope Murray had shot far away from the camp, carelessly set the grass on fire. Luckily we saw it two miles off, and by clearing the ground, and burning the stubble round the waggons, we escaped. It was a wonderful sight to watch the wall of smoke and flame as it licked up the grass and bush and coiled itself in folds about the tree stems; birds, insects, and beasts fleeing before it. As it approached our clearing, the heat was intense, and we had some difficulty in restraining the frightened horses and oxen; but the roaring rolling flame came within thirty yards of us, and then as it touched the edge of our charmed circle died away into nothingness, its disappointment seeming to goad it onward to right and left.

The flat open country held till we reached the Molopo River. The sketch very correctly represents this little stream when we first saw it, and gives a good general idea of the 500 or 600 miles we had come. Seven different kinds of animals were within view, some, especially the quaggas and the buffaloes, in large herds—springbucks, hartebeests, gnus, &c., filling in the picture; together there could not have been fewer than 3,000. I shot a couple of buffaloes for the camp, and then inspanning passed ahead towards the ridge of low hills, fifteen miles beyond, and running east and west; they told of a coming change of scenery, and the next day we stood on the top of them—to the south 600 miles of rolling plain, very similar to that immediately below, lay between us and the southern sea; but to the north the scene was changed, the well-wooded and watered valley of the Ba-Katla, a broken country full of game, was stretched out before us—in those days a hunter’s paradise. For the first time tracks of rhinoceros, giraffe, and other unknown creatures were abundant, and we longed to cultivate the closest relations with them.

Without any just cause I thought myself a better sportsman than my companion, and determined to seek my game alone, in the hope that I might be the first to bag a rhinoceros. All day long I followed, with an attendant Hottentot, a trail of one of these animals, neglecting inferior game, but my experience in African woodcraft was small then, and I believe now that the spoor may have been a week old. At last, tired and disgusted with my want of success in not coming up with the object of my search, I shot an antelope, and returned rather earlier than usual to the waggons, which had been ordered to outspan under the range of hills. It was still daylight when I reached them, and there sat my friend Murray, quiet, cool and calm, very calm indeed. He greeted me with a nod and a smile, and asked me what I had killed? ‘A buck,’ I answered. He said nothing, but kept on smiling serenely. Presently I noticed a group of Kafirs sitting round their fire, and eating as only Kafirs can eat. ‘What are those brutes gorging themselves with?’ I asked my quiet friend. ‘Oh, only some ofthe rhinoceroses I shot this afternoon.’ I noted the plural, the iron entered into my soul, but I merely said: ‘Ah! indeed!’ in an easy nonchalant way I flattered myself, as if the shooting a rhinoceros was a matter of supreme indifference to me in those days, and walked to my own waggon.

Next morning at breakfast my friend offered to show me where the rhinoceroses lived. I was quite meek now, and ready to be introduced to this entirely imaginary locality. At that time we had not to go far to find, and had hardly left the camp a quarter of an hour, when the leading Kafir pointed out a great ugly beast rubbing itself against a tree eighty yards from us. I was off my pony in a second, determined to get to close quarters as soon as, and if possible sooner than, my companion. We both stalked to within twenty yards without being seen, and knelt down, I with the stump of a small tree before me; we fired together, and while the smoke still hung, I was aware of an angry and exceedingly plain-looking beast making straight at me through it. Luckily he had to come rather uphill to my stump, and his head was a little thrown back, when, within five feet of the muzzle of my gun, he fell, with a shot up his nostril, the powder blackening his already dingy face. This was aborili(or sour-tempered one); as a rule, the only really troublesome fellow of his family. I remember thinking my first introduction promised a stormy acquaintance, and hoping there might be gentler specimens, who rather liked being shot, or at all events did not resent it so violently. I got two or three times into serious trouble with these lumbering creatures; but the stories shall be told as they crop up. I may mention here, however, that success in rhinoceros shooting depends very greatly upon the sportsman’s kneeling or squatting. I lost many at first by firing from a standing position. The consequence was, that the ball only penetrated one lung, and with the other untouched the beast runs on for miles, unless, of course, the heart happen to be pierced; whereas, fired from a lower level, the ball passes through both lungs, and brings him up in 100 or 200 yards.A rhinoceros very seldom drops to the shot. Of all I killed, but two fell dead in their tracks. Exclusive of the Quebaaba (R. Oswellii), which was probably a variety of the mahoho, (R. Simus), and of which we killed three and saw five, there were three kinds—the Mahoho, theR. Africanus, and theR. Keitloa.[1]I say ‘were,’ for whilst I write I hear that the dear old mahoho is extinct. I am very sorry. He was never, I believe, found north of the Zambesi, but between that river and the Molopo, of which we have just spoken, he was formerly in great force. Poor old stupid fellow, too quiet as a rule, though, when thoroughly upset (like a good-natured man in a passion) reckless, he was just the very thing for young gunners to try their ’prentice hand on, and directly the Kafirs got muskets he was bound to go; though, considering the numbers there used to be, I hoped he would have lasted longer. He had no enemies to fear, save man and the hyæna, and the first without firearms would have made but little impression on him; for, although sometimes taken in the pitfalls, he was never, so far as I know, killed by spears. The hyæna, when hard pressed for food, would occasionally attack the male, who is formed like the boar, and eat into his bowels from behind; but it was a long business, and not by any means always successful. The ‘Cape wolf’ must havebeen very hard set before he attempted it.

I have seen these long-horned, square-nosed creatures in herds of six and eight, and when in need of a large supply of meat for a tribe, have shot six within a quarter of a mile, with single balls. They had a curious habit which helped the sportsman, and has no doubt led to their too rapid extinction. If you found four or five together, and wounded one mortally, he would run off with the others until he fell, and then the survivors would make a circular procession round him until the gun was again fired, and another wounded. Off they would go again, halting and repeating the performance when the second fell, and so on to the end. The female was an affectionate mother, never deserting her calf, but making it trot before her, until she was mortally wounded, when she seemed to lose her head and shot on in advance, and we then always knew she would not go fifty yards further. Though they were a very meditative inoffensive lot, there was a point at which they drew the line. I once saw Vardon pull a mahoho’s tail; this, however, was taking too great a liberty, and if I had not been near he might have suffered, but, as the heavy brute swung round to give chase, a ball at very close quarters stopped him. We have often been obliged to drive them from the bush before camping for the night. They apparently mistook the waggons for some huge new beasts, and were very troublesome; but this hallucination was not confined to the mahoho. A borili in a great passion away to the east of the Limpopo, charged Livingstone’s waggon, smashing his iron baking-pot. The borili is fidgety, apparently always in bad health, and constantly on the look out for a tree to scratch his mangy hide against. He has, too, an evil habit of hunting you like a bloodhound. He is the smallest of the three, with a short, snubby head, and a well-defined prehensile lip.

The keitloa, or more equal horned variety, is a mixture in form and temper between the mahoho and the borili; much larger than the latter, with differently shaped body, head,and horns, and less development of lip. The mahoho and quebaaba live on grass, the end of the latter’s horn from its downward curve being abraded by contact with the ground as he feeds. The borili eats bush alone, and the keitloa a mixed diet of grass and bush.

I could never understand the great power and strength of a rhinoceros’ horn. It is sessile on the bone of the snout, but not part of, or attached to it; apparently it is only kept in its place by the thickness of the skin, and yet, as I mention hereafter, a white rhinoceros threw me and my horse clear up into the air. Of course, the enormous muscles of the neck bore the brunt of the lift, but the horn did not suffer in any way. It is quite intelligible that the fact of it not being cemented to the bone would render it less liable to fracture at the base, and in itself it is tough enough, though consisting only of agglutinated hair; but I am only wondering that, attached as it is, it should possess the necessary rigidity for the work it does. It is occasionally used in the most determined way by rhinoceroses who have mutual differences to adjust. The Kafirs pare it down into hafts for their battle-axes. Of strips of the hide we made horse-whips, as the Egyptians do man-whips of that of the hippopotamus.

For his bulk the rhinoceros, especially the borili, is a quick mover in a hard trot and sometimes a gallop. The whole tribe are heavies, taking their pleasure, if any, very sadly. The hippopotamus, an even more ungainly beast, has the decency to remain most of his time in the water, but the ‘chukuru’ thinks it behoves him to bask in the sunlight and parade his ugliness. Standing motionless is the routine of his life, a scrub now and then against a tree hisdélassement—a very solid, stolid brute!

These creatures appear to me to be out of time, to have belonged to a former state of things, and to have been forgotten when the change was made. Often have I sat upon a ridge and looked at them as they moved solemnly and clumsily on the plain below, wondering how they still came to be in this world, and it has occurred to me how delightful it would have been to watch the pre-Adamite beasts in the same way, and learn their manners—which, I fear, were bad—as they came and went, no other man to interfere with your preserves, the world all to yourself and your beastly companions! How they would fight, and wallow, and roar, and how very cunning you would have to be to escape being eaten! I am afraid in my dreams two or three large-bored, hard-hitting guns have figured asdesiderata; indeed, under such circumstances, I should not see the fun of doing king with a celt for a sceptre and half a dozen flint-headed arrows as a standing armament.

The rhinoceros would be even easier of approach than he is were it not for his attendant bird, a black slim-built fellow very like the king crow of India, who, in return I take it for his food, the parasitic insects on the chukuru, watches over his fat friend and warns him of the coming danger by springing up in the air and alighting smartly again with a peck on his back or head. This puts him on the alert, and he does his best, by sniffing and listening, to find out the point from which he is threatened, for his ears are quick and his scent excellent; but, as you are below wind of him, sound and smell travel badly, and his vision is by no means first rate. The natives by a figure transfer the connection between the bird and the beast to themselves, and when they wish to emphasise the great affection they bear you, or the great care they intend to take of you, address you as ‘my rhinoceros,’ an elliptical expression by which they mean to convey that they are your guardian birds. They are not always quite unfailing. Going out from Kolobeng after elephants I had heard of in the neighbourhood, I passed an old rain-doctor, whom I knew well, making rain with his pot on the fire, and his herbs and charms on the bubble. ‘Chukuru ami, where are you going?’ he asked. ‘To shoot elephants,’ I replied. ‘I was just making rain, but as you are my chukuru, I put it off till to-morrow.’ Is it necessary to say I was wet through in half an hour? A fine heavy thunderstorm was brewing whilst he was boiling.This rain-making is the Kafir’s pet superstition—the power is hereditary—believed in by the maker and his fellow-countrymen. Conditions difficult to keep are imposed, such as that the women are not to speak one word when at work in the fields: if the rain fails, why of course the women spoke!

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