When Selous reached the Chobe he found that the elephants had all disappeared, but does not state the cause, which I have since ascertained was probably due to the great drives organized by Sepopo, Chief of the Barotsi, in the triangle of the Chobe-Zambesi delta. Apropos of this, my friend McLeod of McLeod gave me the following account. In 1875 he, with Dorehill and W. Fairlie, trekked up from the south and left their waggons at Pandamatenka on the Zambesi. Here they crossed the river and went in on foot, intending to hunt in the Barotsi country. After good sport with game, Sepopo received the party kindly and invited them to a great elephant drive which annually took place in September in the junction formed by the meeting of the Chobe and Zambesi rivers. Many thousands of natives took part in this great hunt. A line of fire enclosed the base of the triangle, into which several hundred elephants had been driven, whilst some thousands of natives in canoes lay in the rivers on each flank to cut off elephants and shoot and spear them in the water as they broke out. When all was in readiness the lines from the base fires advanced and the elephants began to break back and the shooting began. "Such a fusillade," remarked McLeod, "more resembled a battle than a hunt; the firing was of the wildest description, and so inaccurate that we were in constant danger of losing our lives. At the end of the day only nine elephants were killed by our party and the natives round us, whilst the majority broke through our cordon and that of the fire behind and escaped. A considerable number, however, were speared and shot on the rivers on each flank. Several men were killed and wounded in the attack."
The following year (1876) another great hunt of similar character took place, and late in the season Sepopo was assassinated and the whole country thrown into a state of anarchy.
These great hunts, scaring the elephants out of the whole district, would account for Selous' bad luck in 1877, but he seemed to have enjoyed himself hunting buffalo, of which he killed no fewer than forty-five in four months on the Chobe. He states that he experienced a few dangers and one rather narrow escape.
Selous, although he did not consider the buffalo so dangerous an antagonist as the lion, had his full share of adventures with them. His escape from an old bull which killed his horse under him, on the Nata river in May, 1874, was almost miraculous, for a buffalo seldom leaves his victim once he has got him down.
He found two old buffalo bulls and galloped within three yards of them, and the rifle missed fire. After another chase one of the bulls, getting annoyed, stood and offered a good shot, and the cap again played the hunter false.[17]
"Putting on a third cap, I now kept it down with my thumb, and was soon once more close behind him, and had galloped for perhaps a couple of minutes more, when, entering a patch of short thick mopani bush, he stopped suddenly, wheeled round, and came on at once, as soon as he caught sight of the horse, with his nose stretched straight out and horns laid back, uttering the short grunts with which these animals invariably accompany a charge.
"There was no time to be lost, as I was not more than forty yards from him; so, reining in with a jerk and turning the horse at the same instant broadside on, I raised my gun, intending to put a ball, if possible, just between his neck and shoulder, which, could I have done so, would either have knocked him down, or at any rate made him swerve, but my horse, instead of standing steady as he had always done before, now commenced walking forward, though he did not appear to take any notice of the buffalo. There was no time to put my hand down and give another wrench on the bridle (which I had let fall on the horse's neck), and for the life of me I could not get a sight with the horse in motion. A charging buffalo does not take many seconds to cover forty yards, and in another instant his outstretched nose was within six feet of me, so, lowering the gun from my shoulder, I pulled it off right in his face, at the same time digging the spurs deep into my horse's sides. But it was too late, for even as he sprang forward the old bull caught him full in the flank, pitching him, with me on his back, into the air like a dog. The recoil of the heavily-charged elephant-gun with which I was unluckily shooting, twisted it clean out of my hands, so that we all, horse, gun, and man, fell in different directions. My horse regained its feet and galloped away immediately, but even with a momentary glance I saw that the poor brute's entrails were protruding in a dreadful manner. The buffalo, on tossing the horse, had stopped dead, and now stood with his head lowered within a few feet of me. I had fallen in a sitting position, and facing my unpleasant-looking adversary. I could see no wound on him, so must have missed, though I can scarcely understand how, as he was so very close when I fired.
"However, I had not much time for speculation, for the old brute, after glaring at me a few seconds with his sinister-looking bloodshot eyes, finally made up his mind and, with a grunt, rushed at me. I threw my body out flat along the ground to one side, and just avoided the upward thrust of his horn, receiving, however, a severe blow on the left shoulder with the round part of it, nearly dislocating my right arm with the force with which my elbow was driven against the ground, and receiving also a kick on the instep from one of his feet. Luckily for me, he did not turn again, as he most certainly would have done had he been wounded, but galloped clean away.
"The first thing to be done was to look after my horse, and at about 150 yards from where he had been tossed I found him. The buffalo had struck him full in the left thigh; it was an awful wound, and, as the poor beast was evidently in the last extremity, I hastily loaded my gun and put him out of his misery. My Kafirs coming up just then, I started with them, eager for vengeance, in pursuit of the buffalo, but was compelled finally to abandon the chase, leaving my poor horse unavenged."
Curiously enough, McLeod met with an almost identical accident on the Nata in 1875. The buffalo struck the horse behind in his charge, and horse, rifle, and rider were all thrown to the ground. Although McLeod was lying helpless, the buffalo confined its fury to the horse and struck it with his horns till life was extinct. Then, without looking at McLeod, who had been thrown into a thorn-bush, it galloped away.