Selous gives several instances of the tenacity of life and viciousness retained to the last moment of the buffalo.[18]
"Once, in 1874, when hunting with George Wood near the Chobe, we came upon an old buffalo bull lying down in some long grass. My friend gave him a bullet as he lay, upon which he jumped up and stood behind some mopani trees, only exposing his head and hind-quarters on either side their stems. After eyeing us for a few seconds he turned and went off at a gallop, but before he had gone many yards, Wood fired at him with his second gun and knocked him over; he was on his legs again in a moment, and, wheeling round, came straight towards me at a heavy gallop, his nose stretched straight out and grunting furiously. When he was about twenty yards from me I fired with my large four-bore elephant-gun and struck him fair in the chest. This staggered but did not stop him, for, swerving slightly, he made straight for the Kafir carrying my second gun; this the man at once threw down and commenced climbing a tree. The buffalo just brought his right horn past the tree, and scraping it up the trunk so as to send all the loose pieces of bark flying, caught the Kafir a severe blow on the inside of the knee, nearly knocking him out of the tree. The sturdy beast then ran about twenty yards farther, knelt gently down and, stretching forth its nose, commenced to bellow, as these animals almost always do when dying; in a few minutes it was lying dead."
Buffaloes wounded by man or lions are always dangerous.
"One cold winter morning in 1873, I left my camp before sunrise, and had not walked a quarter of a mile skirting round the base of a low hill, when, close to the same path I was following, and not twenty yards off, I saw an old buffalo bull lying under a bush. He was lying head on towards us, but did not appear to notice us. My gun-carriers were behind, having lingered, Kafir-like, over the camp-fire, but had they been nearer me I should not have fired for fear of disturbing elephants, of which animals I was in search.
"As I stood looking at the buffalo, Minyama, one of my Kafirs, threw an assegai at it from behind me, which, grazing its side, just stuck in the skin on the inside of its thigh. Without more ado, the ugly-looking old beast jumped up and came trotting out, with head up and nose extended, evidently looking for the disturbers of its peace, and as Minyama was hiding behind the trunk of a large tree, and the rest of the Kafirs had made themselves scarce, it at once came straight at me, grunting furiously. I was standing close to a very small tree, not more than six inches in diameter, but as I was unarmed, and to run would have been useless, I swarmed up it with marvellous celerity. The buffalo just came up and looked at me, holding his nose close to my feet, and grunting all the time. He then turned and went off at a lumbering canter, and I then, for the first time, saw that he had been terribly torn and scratched on the hind-quarters and shoulders by lions. Had he tried to knock my little sapling down, he might, I think, easily have accomplished it; as it was, my legs being bare, and the bark of the tree very rough, I had rubbed a lot of skin off the insides of my knees and the calves of my legs."[19]
Buffaloes, if the ground is hard, can go at a great pace and can outrun a horse for some distance. It once took me a chase of five miles before I got up with a big bull on whose head I had set my desires. "In 1873," writes Selous, "a buffalo cow, although severely wounded, ran down in the open a horse Lobengula had lent me, and on which my Hottentot driver was mounted; she struck the horse as it was going at full speed between the thighs with her nose, and, luckily striking short, knocked it over on one side and sent its rider flying, but before she could do further damage a bullet through her shoulders from George Wood incapacitated her for further mischief."
He seems to have been much depressed at this time as to his prospects of making a living—at any rate as an elephant-hunter and trader. "Nothing[20] has gone right with me since I left England, nor do I think it ever will again. I was born under an unlucky star, for even if I do not suffer from personal and particular bad fortune, I seem just to hit off the particular year and the particular part of the country for my speculation when and where everything has gone to rack and ruin. Had I left England in October, 1875, instead of February, 1876, I should in all human probability have done fairly well, and been able to return to England at the beginning of the next year (1878), for last year 40,000 lbs. of ivory were traded at the Zambesi alone, and every hunter did well. This year, owing principally to Sepopo's assassination, only 2500 lbs. have been traded, and not a hunter has earned his salt. But, mind you, I do not yet despair; I am still well to the good, and, if I can only get to a country which is not worked out, I will soon get a few pounds together." Later the same year he writes to his father (October 17th, 1877): "On this side of the river elephant-hunting is at an end, all the elephants being either killed or driven away. I am now going to try and go down the Zambesi to Tete—a Portuguese settlement, and from there to the new missionary settlement at Lake Nyassa."
After returning to Pandamatenka in 1877, Selous went down the Zambesi with a Mr. Owen and with donkeys, bent on trading and hunting in the "fly" north of the river. Eight days later he crossed at Wankie's Town and reached Mwemba's kraal—that chief being an important local chief of the Batongas. Mwemba was much pleased to see the travellers, as he stated they were the first white men he had ever met. The donkeys, too, were new beasts to him.
We need scarcely follow Selous' wanderings in the pestilential climate of the Zambesi valley during the next few months. He was completely disappointed in finding elephants, and both he and his companion suffered severely from fever in the deadly climate. All down the river he had daily evidence of the evil doings of the Portuguese, who employed the Shakundas to capture and enslave Batongan girls for their use and subsequent trade in human flesh. The price paid for a girl was usually an old musket or about twenty rupees. Near the mouth of the Kafukwe the travellers met Canyemba and Mendonca, head chiefs of the Shakundas, who appeared to be a proper pair of scoundrels, but small-pox was raging here, so Selous and Owen did not stay for long, but went north into the Manica country on December 13th. Hence they got up to the high country and shot a little game, including some konze (Liechtenstein's hartebeest), the first Selous had seen.