Although gemsbucks, when brought to bay, are doubtless dangerous antagonists to dogs, and very possibly sometimes kill lions which have attacked them incautiously, I should doubt their being as fierce an animal by nature as either the sable or roan antelope. At least, I have never seen any of those I have wounded make the same threatening demonstrations as the last-named animals always do when closely approached. I once fired at a bull gemsbuck which was galloping obliquely past me, and dropped him instantly, and as he was still lying motionless when I cantered up to him, I thought he was dead. I noted the position of the bullet-mark, rather high up just behind the shoulder, and thought it must have smashed the vertebral column and so caused instant death. I then dismounted beneath a neighbouring tree, and, placing my rifle against the stem, walked towards the dead animal—as I thought. I was within a few yards of its head, when suddenly, with scarcely a preliminary kick, it rose to its feet and stood facing me. I was so near it that I thought it would be sure to charge, as almost any roan or sable antelope bull would have done so in similar circumstances. But, much to my relief, after eyeing me steadily for a few seconds, it turned and galloped off, and might easily have got away altogether, had my horse not been a good one. When I eventually killed it, I found that my first bullet had only grazed the vertebral column, and momentarily paralysed the poor animal. But it had a splendid chance for vengeance, of which it altogether failed to take advantage, and I certainly would not care to afford another of its kind a similar opportunity.
I have not heard whether or not the plague of rinderpest which swept through South Africa in 1896, and worked such terrible havoc amongst both the cattle and game of that vast territory, affected the gemsbucks. But, isolated as they are in the arid wastes of the Kalahari, I should imagine not; and since they are protected from constant persecution by the inhospitable nature of their surroundings, I fancy that they will long outlive many other species of South African game, which but a few years ago were far more numerous. May this be so; for, though the gemsbuck will always be hard to find, and by no means easy to bring to bag when found, these difficulties enhance his value, whilst his head will ever be one of the most beautiful and coveted trophies to be won in the hunting-fields of Africa.
CHAPTER XV
SOME CURIOUS HUNTING EXPERIENCES
Contrast between Rhodesia to-day and long ago—The old days the best—White rhinoceroses and elephants drinking—A night on the Sikumi river—Abundance of big game—A white rhinoceros visits my camp—My queerest experience—Meet with two black rhinoceroses—A near approach—Rhinoceros knocked down—Apparently dead—Commence to cut it up—Rhinoceros regains consciousness—Gets on its legs—And runs off—Another curious experience—Buffaloes and tse-tse flies—Meeting with lioness—Hammer of rifle lost—Bushmen sent in search of it—Lions met with—Lion and lioness stand close to me—The chance of a lifetime—Rifle misses fire—Lions run off—Lion again seen—Rifle useless—Throw it at the lion—The irony of fate.
As I read almost weekly, in one or other of the papers devoted to South Africa, some account of all the marvellous changes which have recently been brought about, through the energy and intelligence of Britons, in the spacious country now known as Rhodesia, my thoughts often go back to the days when I first wandered and hunted through that land of stirring memories.
That was nearly forty years ago now, and Matabeleland was less known and more inaccessible then than is any part of Central Africa to-day, for at that time not a yard of railway had been laid from any coast town of the Cape Colony or Natal towards the interior of the country. Lo Bengula, a powerful chief of Zulu race, had but recently been elected king of the Matabele, and savagery seemed so firmly established throughout all the territory between the Limpopo and the Zambesi that I never dreamt I should live to see the destruction of that great chief's far-reaching power, and the defeat and dispersal of his brave but barbarous tribesmen, to be quickly followed by the founding of a European town near the site of the old native "great place," and the building of a railway through the wilderness to the north.
Ah! but the old days were the best, after all—or at any rate I think so. The traveller by rail to the Victoria Falls will journey at his ease, it is true, in a saloon carriage, with plenty to eat and drink, through seemingly endless wastes of low forest and scrubby bush, and will probably think it a terribly monotonous and uninteresting country; but no man will ever again sit by a camp fire near one of the little rivers the railway will cross, eating prime pieces of fat elephant's heart, roasted on a forked stick, nor watch the great white rhinoceroses coming to drink just before dark, nor lie and listen to herd after herd of elephants drinking and bathing in the river near their camp. On one particular night in 1873 which I shall never forget, the splashing and trumpeting of troop after troop of hot and thirsty elephants was kept up from soon after dark till long past midnight. This was at the little river Sikumi, which the traveller of to-day will cross by an iron bridge. There was no monotony about the country between Bulawayo and the Victoria Falls in those days. The abundance of big game—elephants, black and white rhinoceroses, giraffes, buffaloes, zebras, and many varieties of antelopes—made it always interesting alike to the hunter and the lover of nature. As I think of my early wanderings through those once well-stocked hunting-grounds in the days when I made my living by shooting elephants, I can recall many interesting experiences, some of a decidedly exciting nature, others only curious. I never had any narrow escapes from rhinoceroses, although I encountered numbers of these prehistoric-looking animals, but I do not think that the black rhinoceros of the interior of South Africa was ever of so aggressive a nature as he appears to be in many districts of East Africa to-day, though a wounded one was always likely to become savage.