As it was now getting on for midday, I had the young inyala carried forthwith to the kraal, where I remained until about four o'clock, then again sallied forth, and did another two hours' jungle-creeping before dark. I saw an inyala doe, and could have fired at her, but, thinking there might have been a male accompanying her, did not care to do so too hurriedly, and whilst I was straining my eyes peering into the bush all around her, she either saw or winded me, and bounded off, quite alone as far as I could make out.
Early the following morning I was again in the bush, and just after sunrise came on a male inyala close to the river. He was standing behind a mass of tree stems, with just his tail showing on one side and part of his head on the other. He was evidently looking at us, and as I knew he would be off in a moment, giving but little chance of a shot, I thought I had better try and put a bullet into him through an interstice amongst the tree stems, where I could see what I took to be part of his neck. I made a bad shot, however, as my bullet, instead of passing through the opening, imbedded itself in the wood of one of the tree stems, and the inyala went off uninjured.
On returning to the kraal, Gugawi proposed to take me to a spot some few miles higher up the Usutu, where he said there were plenty of inyalas, whilst at the same time the bush was not so dense as near his kraal. Being by this time thoroughly sick of crawling about bent nearly double, I hailed with delight the idea of finding the game I was seeking in a country where I could walk upright, and visions of inyalas feeding through open glades passed through my mind—visions, alas, which were never realised, for in my small experience I never found these antelopes anywhere except in dense bush. However, I was glad of the change, and soon had everything ready for a move.
In the afternoon we travelled some five or six miles up the river, and pitched camp in a bit of jungle near the water's edge. The Usutu river is here very broad, and reminded me strongly of parts of the Chobi; but whereas the banks of the latter river, as I knew it in the early 'seventies, abounded in game of many descriptions, from the elephant downwards, there was not a track to be seen along the Usutu of any kind of animal with the exception of the inyala. All the wealth of wild life which Baldwin saw in this same district in 1854 had melted away before the guns of the native Amatonga hunters; for, be it noted, this is a country in which but very little game has been killed by white men. Rhinoceroses, buffaloes, koodoos, waterbucks, impalas, lions,—all are gone, the only game left being the inyalas, which owe their preservation to the dense jungles in which they live; and even they are being rapidly killed off, as the natives are always after them, lying in wait for them in the paths made by the hippopotamuses or creeping stealthily through the bush in their pursuit.
Curiously enough, in these thickets, where inyalas are so numerous, there are very few bushbucks, although the surroundings are in every respect suited to their requirements. I can only account for the scarcity of the bushbucks, where inyalas are plentiful, by supposing that the latter animals will not tolerate the former—considering them too nearly akin to themselves to make good neighbours; for a male bushbuck might be excused, I think, for making love to an inyala doe, which scarcely differs from one of his own females in any way except size, and that probably not to a sufficient degree to stop his advances during the rutting season; which, of course, would be resented by the male inyala, and the latter being the more powerful animal, has been able to drive his rival out of his preserves. If jealousy is not answerable for the scarcity of bushbucks in these jungles where inyalas are so plentiful, I fail to understand why the former animals should be so numerous lower down the river under exactly similar conditions, except that there there are no inyalas.
In the open expanse of water, some half a mile in breadth, just opposite our camp, several hippopotamuses were grunting and playing about on our arrival, and as long as we remained here there were always some of these animals in sight. In the evening I went out after inyala, but though I saw plenty of spoor, I did not catch sight of one of the animals themselves. Soon after dark a heavy thunderstorm came up from the south, and continued with much lightning and torrents of rain till long after midnight. Having neither a tent nor a waterproof sheet, I, like my native companions, of course got soaking wet; and we had to sit shivering in our drenched blankets until daylight, as the heavy rains had put our fires out and we could not get another alight, everything being wet.
Soon after dawn, however, we managed to get a fire under way, and I then had a cup of warm coffee. Just as the sun was rising I went out into the dripping bush, and returned to camp dry and warm before midday. In spite of what Gugawi had said as to the bush being more open round this camp than near his own kraal, I found but little difference, and should describe all the bush in which I hunted on the Usutu river as dense jungle. In the course of the morning I just caught a glimpse of an inyala—a male evidently by his colour—but failed to get a shot at him. I also saw a large number of the beautiful crested guinea-fowls, which in this district seem to be more numerous than the common South African species. During the heat of the day I remained at our bivouac, and, as the sun was intensely hot, managed to thoroughly dry all my belongings, which had got so wet during the previous night's rain. In the evening I again went out into the bush, and just at dusk caught sight of the hind-quarters of an antelope amongst the thick scrub ahead of me. The light was fast failing, and although I felt sure it was an inyala, as there were apparently no other kinds of antelopes in the district, yet I could not in the least tell whether it was a male or female, but, hoping for the best, fired, and saw nothing more.
On forcing my way through the scrub to where the animal had been when I fired, I found a fine inyala doe lying on the ground, just on the point of death, the bullet having struck her in the left thigh and passed through the whole length of her body into the cavity of the chest. Although disappointed that it was not a male, I skinned her carefully for mounting; and she now forms part of the fine collection of South African mammalia which is in the Museum at Cape Town.
It would be but tedious reading were I to continue to describe in detail my further bush-crawling experiences in search of inyalas. Suffice it to say that, on October 1 and 2, I secured two more fine males, whose heads I preserved for my own collection. Although I should have liked to have got a fourth male for the South African Museum, I did not think it prudent to remain any longer in my camp on the edge of a swamp, where I knew the air must be reeking with malarial poison, as, besides the exhalations from the marsh, the ground (from which I was only separated at nights by a little dry grass and a blanket) had been soaked to the depth of two feet by the recent rain, thus rendering the conditions more than usually unhealthy. The weather, too, was now again looking very threatening, and I did not relish the idea of any further lying out in the rain; as I knew, from former experience, that I should probably have to pay for the wettings I had already suffered, by some attacks of fever—a disease from which I had been entirely exempt for seven years, but the poison of which I knew was still in my blood, and would be likely to be again stirred into activity by my recent exposure to unhealthy conditions.
Hence, on Saturday, October 3, I packed up my things and returned to Gugawi's kraal, walking on in the afternoon to Mr. Wissels's store. At Gugawi's I met an Englishman, who informed me that he had come down from Barberton, and was travelling about amongst the Amatonga, buying skins of wild cats, jackals, etc., which he hoped to sell again at a profit to the Kafirs working in the mines in the Transvaal. He seemed much surprised when I told him that I had only come to Amatongaland in order to shoot an inyala, and frequently remarked in the course of our conversation, "Well, I'm ——; so you've come all this —— way to shoot a —— buck." He also informed me that he was not very well, as he had been "on the burst" for the last three days; but this confidence was superfluous, as no one could have approached within ten yards of him without realising his condition.