полная версия

Buchan John
The African Colony: Studies in the Reconstruction

As we left the river we said farewell to the Road. It showed itself on the Rhodesian side climbing a knoll past a cluster of huts which had once been a police station, but had been relinquished because of the great mortality from fever. Thereafter it was lost among bush and a chain of broken hills. It cared nothing for appearances, being sandy and overgrown and in places scarcely a track at all, for it had a weary way to go before it could be called a civilised road again. There was something purposeful and gallant in the little trail plunging into the wilds, and with regret we took our last look of it and turned our faces southwards.

Our way back lay mostly through dense bush-land, and in the days of hunting and the evenings round the fire I saw much of the life and realised something of the fascination of this strange form of country. It has no obvious picturesqueness, this interminable desert of thorn and sand and rank grass, varied at rare intervals by a raw kopje or a clump of timber. The sun beats on it at mid-day with pitiless force, and if it was hot in the month of August, what must it be at midsummer? The rivers are sand-filled ditches, and the infrequent water is found commonly in brack lagoons; but, dry as it is, it has none of the wholesomeness of most arid countries, generally forming a hotbed of fever. An aneroid which I carried to give a flavour of science to our expedition, put its average elevation at between 1500 and 2000 feet. Agriculture is everywhere impossible, though some of the better timbered parts might make good winter ranching country. But, apart from possible mineral exploitation, the land must remain hunting veld, and indeed is favourably placed for a large-game preserve. The very scarcity of water makes it a suitable dwelling-place for the larger buck, who drink but once a-day; and the difficulty of penetrating such a desert will be an effective agent in preservation. A man walking through it sees nothing for days beyond the dead green of thorn bush, till he comes to some slight ridge and overlooks a round horizon, a plain flat as mid-ocean, crisped with the same monotonous dwarf trees. Hidden away round water-holes there are glades and drives with a faint hint of that softness which to us is inseparable from woodland scenery, but they are so few that they only increase by contrast the sense of hard desolation. The bush is very silent. Its dwellers make no noise as they move about, till evening brings the cries of beasts of prey. The nights in winter are intensely cold, with a sharpness which I found more difficult to endure than the honest frost of the high veld. The noons are dusty and torrid, and the thirst of the bush is a thing not easily coped with. But in three phases this desert took on a curious charm. That South African landscape must be bleak indeed which is not transformed by the mornings and evenings. For two hours after sunrise a chill hangs in the air, light fresh winds blow from nowhere, and the scrub which is so dead and ugly at mid-day assumes clear colours and stands out olive-green and rich umber against the pale sky. At twilight the wonderful amethyst haze turns everything to fairyland, the track shimmers among purple shadows, and every little gap in the bush is magnified to a glade in a forest. I have also a very vivid memory of a view from one of the small ridges in full moonlight. It was like looking from a hill-top on a vast virgin forest, a dark symmetrical ocean of tree-tops with a glimpse of ivory from an open space where the road emerged for a moment from the covert.

There is little danger in hunting here unless you are happy enough to meet a lion and so unfortunate as not to kill with the first shot. But it is very arduous and hot, the clothes become pincushions of thorns, face and hands are scratched violently with swinging boughs, and a man’s temper is apt to get brittle at times. In thick bush one can only hunt by spoor, and it is a slow business with a grilling sun on one’s back and a few obtuse native boys. The native is usually a good tracker, but he is an unsatisfactory colleague because of the difficulty of communicating with him. For one thing, even in a language which he understands, he does not seem to know the meaning of the note of interrogation. If he is asked if a certain mark is a black wildebeest’s spoor, he imagines that his master asserts that such is the case, and politely hastens to agree with him, whereas he knows perfectly well that it is not, and if he understood that he was being asked for information, would give it willingly. The difficulty, too, of hunting by a kind of rude instinct is that when this instinct is at fault he is left utterly helpless, and has no notion of any sort of deductive reasoning. If a native is once lost he is thoroughly lost, though his knowledge of the country may enable him to keep alive when a white man would die. I found also that my boys had so many errands of their own to do in the bush that it was difficult to keep them to their work. They scrambled for baobab fruit; they hunted for wolves’ and lions’ dung, from which they make an ointment, smeared with which they imagine they can safely walk through the bush at all seasons. The supreme danger of this kind of life is undoubtedly to be lost away from water and tracks. It is a misfortune which any man may suffer, but for any one with some experience of savage country, who takes his bearings carefully at the start and never gets out of touch with them, the danger is very small. In this country there is always some landmark – a kopje, a big tree, and in some parts the distant ranges of mountains – by which, with the sun and some knowledge of the lie of the land, one can safely travel many miles from the camp. For a man on a good horse there is no excuse, here at any rate, for losing himself; for a man on foot heat and fatigue and the closeness of the bush may well drive all calculations out of his head. Apart from other terrors, a night in those wilds is likely to be disturbed from the attentions of beasts of prey, and a man who has not the means of making a scherm or a fire will have to spend a restless night in a tree. To be finally and hopelessly lost is the most awful fate which I can imagine. It is easy to conjure up the details, and many uneasy nights I have spent in such dismal forecasts. First, the annoyance, the hasty pushing through the scrub, believing the camp to be just in front, and lamenting that you are late for dinner. Then the slow fatigue, the slow consciousness that the camp is not there, that you do not know where you are, and that you must make the best of the night in the open. Morning comes, and confidently you try to take your bearings; by this time others are seeking you, you reflect, and with a little care you can find your whereabouts and go to meet them. Then a long hot day, without water or food, pushing eternally through the dull green scrub, every moment leaving confidence a little weaker, till the second night comes, and you doze uneasily in a horror of nightmare and physical illness. Then the spectral awaking, the watching of a giddy sunrise, the slow forcing of the body to the same hopeless quest, till the thorns begin to dance before you and the black froth comes to the lips, and in a little reason takes wing, and you die crazily by inches in the parched silence.

I have said that the bush is without human inhabitants, but every now and then we found traces of other travellers. A dusty pack-donkey would suddenly emerge from the thicket, followed by two dusty and sunburnt men, each with some prehistoric kind of gun. Sometimes we breakfasted with this kind of party, and heard from them the curious tale of their wanderings. They would ask us the news, having seen no white man for half a-year, and it was odd to see the voracity with which they devoured the very belated papers we could offer them. They had been east to the Portuguese border and west to Bechuanaland and north to the Zambesi, pursuing one of the hardest and most thankless tasks on earth. The prospector skirmishes ahead of civilisation. On his labours great industries are based, but he himself gets, as a rule, little reward. Fever and starvation are incidents of his daily life, and yet there is a certain relish in it for the old stager, and I doubt if he would be content to try an easier job which curtailed his freedom. For, if you think of it, there is an undercurrent of perpetual excitement in the life, which is treasure-hunting made a business: any morning may reveal the great reef or the rich pipe, and change this dusty fellow with his tired mules into a nabob. Among the taciturn men who crept out of the bush every type was represented, from Australian cow-punchers to well-born gentlemen from home, whose names were still on the lists of good clubs. One party I especially remember, three huge Canadians, who came in the darkness and encamped by our fire. They had a ramshackle cart and two mules, and the whole outfit was valeted by the very smallest nigger-boy you can imagine. It did one good to see the way in which that child sprang to attention at sunrise, and, clad simply in a gigantic pair of khaki trousers and one side of an old waistcoat, lit the fire, made coffee for his three masters, cooked breakfast, caught and harnessed the mules, and was squatting in the cart, all within the shortest possible time. The Canadians had been all over the world and in every profession, but of all trades they liked the late war best, and made anxious inquiries about Somaliland. They were the true adventurer type, – long, thin, hollow-eyed, tough as whipcord, men who, like the Black Douglas, would rather hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep. After making fierce inroads on my tobacco, and giving me their views on the native question and many incidental matters, they departed into the Western bush, one man cracking the whip and whistling “Annie Laurie,” and the other two, with guns, creeping along on the flanks. I took off my hat in spirit to the advance-guard of our people, the men who know much and fear little, who are always a little ahead of everybody else in the waste places of the earth. You can readily whistle them back to the defence of some portion of the Empire or gather them for the maintenance of some single frontier; but when the work is done they retire again to their own places, with their eyes steadfastly to the wilds but their ears always open for the whistle to call them back once more.

August 1903.

CHAPTER XI.
THE FUTURE OF SOUTH AFRICAN SPORT

The great days of South African sport are over, and there is no disguising the fact. Open any early record, such as Oswell or Gordon-Cumming, and the size and variety of the bag dazzles the mind of the amateur of to-day. Then it was possible to shoot lion in Cape Colony and elephant in the Transvaal, and to find at one’s door game whose only habitat is now some narrow region near the Mountains of the Moon. Turn even to the later pages of Mr Selous, and anywhere north of a line drawn east and west through Pretoria, there was such sport to be had as can now be found with difficulty on the Zambesi. The absence of game laws and the presence of many bold hunters have cleared the veld of the vast herds of antelope which provided the voortrekker with fresh meat, and the advance of industry and settlement have driven predatory animals still farther afield. From the Zambesi southward ten or twelve species of antelope may still be found in fair numbers, but the nobler and larger kinds of game, the giraffe, the koodoo, the black wildebeest, the two hartebeests, and the eland, are scarce save in a few remote valleys. The white rhinoceros is almost extinct and the ordinary kind uncommon. The hippopotamus, which is not a sporting animal, is still found in most tropical rivers; wild pigs – both bush-hog and wart-hog – are plentiful in the northern bush; but the graceful zebra is rapidly disappearing. Lion are still fairly easy to come on unawares anywhere north of the Limpopo, and in the mountains and flats of the north-eastern Transvaal. A few troops of elephant may exist unpreserved in the region between the Pungwe and the Zambesi, a few in Northern Mashonaland, with perhaps one or two in the Northern Kalahari. The war, on the whole, has been on the side of the wild animals, for though large herds of springbok and blesbok were slaughtered by the troops on the high veld, the native, that inveterate poacher, has been restrained from his evil ways by lucrative military employment, so that the northern districts are better stocked to-day than they were five years ago. But the fact remains that South Africa is no longer virgin hunting-veld. The game is disappearing, and, unless every care is taken, will in a few years go the way of the American buffalo. If we are to preserve for South Africa its oldest inhabitants, and keep it as a hunting-ground for the true sportsman, we must bestir ourselves and act promptly. In this, as in graver questions, an intelligent forethought must take the place of the old slackness.

Such a policy must take two forms, – the establishment of good laws for the preservation of game and the regulation of sport, and the formation of game-reserves. The best course would have been to declare a rigid close time for five years, during which no game other than birds and destructive animals should be killed, save in the case of damage to crops. The administrative difficulties, however, in the way of such a heroic remedy were very great, and the code of game laws, now in force in the Transvaal, seems to mark the limit of possible restriction. Under these power is given to declare a close season – a valuable discretionary power, since the season varies widely for different kinds of game – during which no game may be killed, and also to preserve absolutely any specified bird or animal in any specified district up to a period of three years. This would permit the absolute preservation of such animals as the springbok and the blesbok in certain parts of the country where they are scarce, without interfering with sport in other localities where they are plentiful. The ordinary shooting licence for birds and antelope is fixed at £3 for the season; but certain rarer animals have been made special game, and to hunt these permission must be obtained in writing from the Colonial Secretary and a fee paid of £25. The chief of these are the elephant, hippo, rhinoceros, buffalo; the quagga and the zebra; the two hartebeests, the two wildebeests, the roan and the sable antelope, the koodoo, eland, giraffe, and tsessabe. The wild ostrich and that beautiful bird the mahem or crested crane (Chrysopelargus balearica) are also included. Provision is made against the sale or destruction of the eggs of game-birds and the sale of dead game in the close season. Under this law the ordinary man, on the payment of a small sum, has during the season the right to shoot over thirty varieties of game-birds and over a dozen kinds of buck, as well as wild pig and lion and tiger-cats, if he is fortunate enough to find them, on most Crown lands and on private lands when he can get the owner’s permission, – a tolerably wide field for the sportsman. But restrictive laws are not enough in themselves; it is necessary to provide an equivalent to the sanctuary in a deer-forest, reserves where wild animals are immune at all seasons. The late Government established several nominal reserves, notably on the Lesser Sabi River and in the extreme eastern corner of Piet Retief which adjoins Tongaland; but no proper steps were taken to enforce the reservations. The new Government has strictly delimited the Sabi preserve and appointed a ranger; and certain adjoining land companies between the Sabi and the Olifants have made similar provisions for their own land. But one reserve in one locality is not enough. The true principle is to establish a small reserve and a sanctuary in each district. Part of the Crown lands in Northern Rustenburg, in Waterberg, in Northern and Eastern Zoutpansberg, and especially in the Springbok Flats district, might well be formed into reserves without any real injury to such agricultural and pastoral development as they are capable of. If the greater land companies could be induced to follow suit – and there is no reason why they should not – an effective and far-reaching system of game preservation could be put in force.¹² Finally, something must be done at once to stop native poaching, more especially the depredations of the wretched Kaffir dogs. Officers of constabulary, land inspectors, as well as all owners and lessees of farms, should have the power to shoot at sight any dog trespassing on a game-preserve or detected in the pursuit of game. An increased dog-tax, too, might stop the present system of large mongrel packs which are to be seen in any Kaffir kraal. A stringent Vermin Act, which is highly necessary for the protection of small stock like sheep and goats, would also help to prevent the slaughter of buck by wild dogs and jackals.

But for the big-game hunter, in the old African sense, there is little or nothing left. The day of small things has arisen, and we must be content to record tamely our sport in braces of birds and heads of small buck, where our grandfathers recorded theirs in lion-skins and tusks and broken limbs. Big game there still is, but they are far afield, and have to be pursued at some risk to horse and man from fly and malaria. The lion, as I have said, is still fairly common in the district between Magatoland and the Limpopo, in the continuation of the Zoutpansberg east to the Rooi Rand, down the slopes of the Lebombo, and in the flats along the Lower Letaba, Olifants, and Limpopo. He is frequently met with in most parts of Rhodesia, though his habits are highly capricious, and while a tourist one day’s journey from Salisbury may see several, a man who spends six months hunting may never get a shot. Portuguese territory is still a haunt of big game, though the natives are doing their best to exterminate it, for the thick bush and the pestilent climate between the Lebombo and the sea will always make hunting difficult; and the Pungwe and its tributaries still form, at the proper season, perhaps the best shooting-ground south of the Zambesi. The elephant cannot be counted a quarry; and any man who attempts to kill an elephant in South Africa to-day deserves severe treatment, save in such preserves as the Addo Bush and the Knysna forest in Cape Colony, where they are rapidly becoming a nuisance. A few head of buffalo still survive, in spite of rinderpest, in the extreme Eastern Transvaal, as well as in Portuguese territory; and the eland, that noblest and largest of buck, is found along the Portuguese border. Report has it that in some of the Drakensberg kloofs between Basutoland and Natal a few stray eland may also be found. The beautiful antelopes, sable and roan, the exquisite koodoo, the blue wildebeest and the two hartebeests, roam in small herds on the malarial eastern flats, and a few giraffe are reported from the same neighbourhood. The gemsbok, with his lengthy taper horns, has long been confined to the remote parts of the Kalahari.

A big-game expedition will, therefore, in a few years’ time still be a possibility in Central South Africa, and with judicious management it may long remain so, for those who can afford the time and the not inconsiderable expense. The best place must remain the country between the Lebombo and the Drakensberg, and north from the Olifants to the Limpopo. Eastern Mashonaland, the Kalahari, and the Pungwe district will be available for those who care to go farther afield. The venue must be chosen according as a man proposes to hunt on horse or on foot. Both forms of sport have their attractions. On the great open flats of the Kalahari and Rhodesia no sport in the world can equal the pursuit of big game with a trained horse – the wild gallop, stalking, so to speak, at racing speed, the quick dismounting and firing, the pursuit of a maimed animal, the imminent danger, perhaps, from a charging buffalo or a wounded lion. This horseback hunting is, as a rule, pursued in a healthy country, every moment is full of breathless excitement, and success requires a steady nerve and a sure seat. But stalking on foot in thick bush makes greater demands on bodily strength and self-possession. The country is rarely wholesome, and in those blazing flats a long daylight stalk will tire the strongest. There is more need, too, for veld-craft, and an intimate knowledge of the habits of game; and when game is found, there is more need for a clear eye and a steady pulse, for a man hunting in veldschoen and a shirt is pretty well at the mercy of a mad animal. But in both forms of sport there is the same lonely freedom, the same wonderful earth, and the same homely and intimate comforts. No man can ever forget the return, utterly tired, in the cool dusk, which is alive with the glimmer of wings, and the sight of the waggon-lantern and the great fire at which the boys are cooking dinner. A wash and a drink – indispensable after a hot day lest a man should overstay his appetite; and then a hunter’s meal, which tastes as the cookery of civilisation seldom tastes. There is no reason why a hunter should not live well, far better than in any South African town, for he can count on fresh meat always, and, if he is fortunate, on eggs and fish and fruit. And then the evening pipe in a deck-chair, with the big lantern swinging from a tree, the great fire making weird shadows in the forest, and natives chattering drowsily around the ashes. Lastly, to an early bed in his blankets, and up again at dawn, with another day before him of this sane and wholesome life.

The chief dangers in African hunting, greater far than any from wild animals, are the chances of malaria and the possibility of getting lost. In many trips the first may be absent, but for a keen man it is often necessary to time his expeditions when the grass is short or when he has a chance of having the field to himself, periods which do not always coincide with the healthy season. It is not for anyone to venture lightly on a long hunting trek. But, granted a sound constitution, decent carefulness in matters such as the abstinence from all liquids save at meals, and from alcohol save before dinner, and the rigorous use of a mosquito-curtain, can generally bring a man safely through. The system can be fortified by small and regular doses of quinine, and the camp should be pitched, whenever possible, in some dry and open spot. These may seem foolish precautions to an old hunter whose body has been seasoned with innumerable attacks, but it is wise for one who has not suffered that misfortune to take every means to avoid it. To be lost in the bush is an accident which every man is horribly afraid of, and which may happen any day even to the most cautious, unless he has gone far in the curious lore of the wilds. There are men, of course, who are beyond the fear of it, chosen spirits to whom a featureless plain is full of intricate landmarks, and the sky is a clearer chart than any map. But the common traveller may walk a score of yards or so from the path, look round, see all about him high waving grasses somewhere in which the road is hidden, go off hastily in what seems the right direction, walk for a couple of hours and change his mind, and then, lo! and behold, his nerve goes and he is lost, perhaps for days, perhaps for ever. The ordinary procedure of a hunting trip, tossing for beats in the morning and then scattering each in a different direction, gives scope for such misfortunes. The safest plan is, of course, never to go out without a competent native guide; and, where this precaution is out of the question, the next best is to rely absolutely on some experienced member of the party who can follow spoor, sit down once you have lost your bearings, and wait till he finds you. A time is fixed after which, if a man does not return, it is presumed that he is in difficulties, and a search party is sent out; and naturally it saves a great deal of trouble if a man does not confuse the searchers by constantly going back on his tracks. If the hunter is on horseback he can try trusting his horse, which is said – I have happily never had occasion to prove the truth of the saying – to be able on the second day to go back to its last water. The whole hunting veld is full of gruesome tales of men utterly lost or found too late; and most hunting parties in flat or thickly wooded country come back with a wholesome dread of the mischances of the bush.

For the man who has little time to spare there remain the smaller buck. And such game is not to be lightly despised. The commonest and smallest are the little duiker and steinbok, shy, fleet little creatures which give many a sporting shot and make excellent eating. I suppose there are few farms in any part of South Africa without a few of them, and in some districts they are nearly as common as hares on an English estate. The springbok, a true gazelle, is more local in his occurrence, though large herds still exist in Cape Colony and parts of the Orange River Colony. Fair-sized herds are to be found, too, in the western district of the Transvaal and in certain parts of Waterberg and Ermelo. The blesbok is rather less frequent, though he used to be common enough, but there are numerous small herds in various parts of the country. These four varieties are the stand-by of South African shooting: other buck are to be sought more as trophies than in the ordinary way of sport. The water-buck, with his handsome head, and extremely poor venison, is common along all the sub-tropical and tropical rivers, but to shoot him requires a certain amount of trekking. So with the reed-buck, who haunts the same localities, though he is still found in places so close to the high veld as the southern parts of Marico and the Amsterdam district in the east. The beautiful impala, with his reddish coat and delicately notched antlers, is the commonest buck in the Sabi game-preserves, and extends over most of the bush veld, as well as parts of Waterberg and a few farms in the south-east. The klipspringer is found on all the slopes of the great eastern range of mountains, and is very common on the Natal side of the Drakensberg. He is a beautiful and difficult quarry, having a chamois-like love of inaccessible places, and being able to cover the most appalling ground at racing speed. The vaal rhebok and the rooi rhebok are found in small numbers in the same localities, and the latter is also fairly common in the wooded hills around Zeerust. Both the bush-pig and the wart-hog are plentiful in the bush veld, and on the slopes of the eastern mountains. Finally, the bush-buck, one of the most beautiful, and, for his size, the fiercest of all buck, is widely distributed among the woods of Cape Colony and Natal, and in the belts of virgin forest which extend with breaks from Swaziland to Zoutpansberg. Living in the dense undergrowth, he has been pretty well out of the way of the hunter who killed for the pot. He is an awkward fellow to meet at close quarters in a bad country, for, when wounded, he will charge, and his powerful horns are not pleasant to encounter. There have been several cases of natives, and even of white men, who have died of wounds from his assaults. His elder brother, the inyala, does not, so far as I know, appear south of the Limpopo.

The favourite South African method of shooting such game as the springbok is by driving him with an army of native beaters down wind against the guns. In an open country buck can be stalked on horseback or ridden down in the Dutch fashion of “brandt.” Elsewhere stalking on foot is the only way, a difficult matter unless the hunter knows the habits and haunts of the game. South African shooting seems hard at first to the new-comer, partly from the difficulty of judging distances in the novel clearness of the air, partly from the shyness of game, which often makes it necessary to take shots at a range which seems ridiculous to one familiar only with Scots deer-stalking, and partly from the extraordinary tenacity of life which those wild animals show,¹³ limiting the choice of marks to a very few parts of the body. But experience can do much, and in time any man with a clear eye and good nerve may look for reasonable success. As has been noted in a former chapter, the best shots in the country, with a few exceptions, are to be found among English immigrants and Colonists of English blood. It is a kind of shooting which seems incredible at first sight to the ordinary man from home. I have known such a hunter to put a bullet at over 100 yards through the head of a korhaan, a bird scarcely larger than a blackcock: a feat which might be set down to accident were it not that the same man was accustomed to shoot small buck running at 200 yards with remarkable success. I should be very sorry to wage war against a corps of sharpshooters drawn from old African hunters.

There remain the numerous game-birds of the country. The finest is, of course, the greater paauw, but he is not very common in the Transvaal itself, though frequent enough in Bechuanaland, Rhodesia, and some parts of the northern bush veld. But of the bustard family, to which the comprehensive name of korhaan is applied, there are at least four varieties, two of which are very common. The bustard is an easy bird, save that he carries a good deal of shot, and has a knack of keeping out of range unless properly stalked or driven. The Dutch word “patrys,” again, covers at least eight varieties of the true partridge, and if we include the sand-grouse (called the Namaqua partridge), of two or three more. None of the South African partridge tribe are equal to their English brothers; but there is no reason why the English bird should not be introduced, and thrive well, and indeed experiments in this direction are being made. There are three birds which the Dutch call “pheasant,” two of them francolins and one the curious dikkop – birds which have few of the qualities of the English pheasant, but which are strong on the wing, offer fair shots, and make excellent eating. Quail are found at certain seasons of the year in vast quantities, and give good sport with dogs; but to my mind the finest South African bird, excepting of course the greater paauw, is the guinea-fowl, which the Dutch call by the quaint and beautiful name of tarentaal. There are two varieties, fairly well distributed – the ordinary crested (Numida coronata) and the blue-headed (Numida Edouardi). In parts of the bush veld they may be seen roosting at night on trees so thickly that the branches are bent with their weight. When pursued in broken country, what with dodging among stones and trees and his short unexpected flight, the guinea-fowl offers some excellent shooting, and as a table-bird he is not easy to beat. Wildfowl are an uncertain quantity on the uplands, though very common nearer the coast. They do not come to the rivers, but, on the other hand, they frequent in great numbers farm dams and the pans and lakes of Standerton and Ermelo. What the Dutch call specifically the “wilde gans” is the Egyptian goose; but several other varieties, including the spur-winged, are to be found. There are some ten kinds of duck, but it would be difficult to say which is the commonest, as they vary in different districts. The Dutch call a bird “teel” which is not the true teal, but the variety known as the Cape teal (Nettion capense), though there is more than one kind of proper teal to be met with. There is a black duck, a variety of pochard, a variety of shoveller, and a kind of shell-duck which is known as the mountain duck (bergeend). Wild pigeons exist in endless quantities; and I must not omit the pretty spur-winged plover, which cries all day long on the western veld, or that most cosmopolitan of birds, the snipe. Along the reed-beds of the Limpopo, in the bulrushes which fringe the pans in Ermelo, by every spruit and dam, you may put up precisely the same fellow that you shoot in Hebridean peat-mosses or on Swedish lakes, or along the canals of Lower Egypt. The little brown long-billed bird has annihilated time and space and taken the whole world for his home.