"I am very sorry indeed, for being with Jameson, who is, of course, a rich man, I should have been free from the constant anxiety which now overhangs me like a black cloud as to whether I shall be able to pay my debts. It is so very easy to lose a hundred pounds in live stock, from sickness, drought, hunger, etc., and so hard, so very hard, to make it. Last year I paid Mr. Leask nearly £1600. This year I only owe a few hundreds and am at present well to the good, as I have nearly £2000 worth of property."
Selous left Bamangwato in April, 1884, and trekked across the desert north-west to the Mababe veldt. He was fortunate enough to find for once plenty of water, owing to thunder-storms, and he did not experience any great hardships as he did in 1873 and 1879. In June he established his main hunting camp near the north end of the Mababe flats. The bushmen here told him of the activities of a man-eating lion who had recently killed several men. Selous at once set out to look for him, and soon found one of the unfortunate victims, torn to pieces and partially eaten. But the lion seems to have left this district, and the hunter was unable to find him, since he did not commit further depredations.
Selous did not remain long on the Mababe. In August he retreated to Sode Gara and Horn's Vley, where he killed some good specimens of giraffe, hartebeest, gemsbuck, and ostrich. Then he moved eastward for a while, and afterwards went south to Tati, which he reached in late November, and so on to Bulawayo, where he remained for the winter, sending his specimens out on a trader's waggon.
After visiting Lobengula, who demanded a salted horse valued at sixty pounds for the right to hunt in Mashunaland, Selous set off again to the north-east. He took with him four horses and thus quaintly describes a new cure for a hopeless "bucker."
"I almost cured him," he says, "of bucking by riding him with an adze handle, and stunning him by a heavy blow administered between the ears as soon as he commenced, which he invariably did as soon as one touched the saddle; but I never could make a shooting horse of him, and finally gave him to Lobengula, in the hope that he would present him to Ma-kwaykwi or some other of his indunas against whom I had a personal grudge."
Selous now went to the Se-whoi-whoi river, where two years previously he killed the last two white rhinoceroses he was destined to see. These great creatures had now become exceedingly scarce in Africa south of the Zambesi, and are now quite extinct in all South Africa except in the neighbourhood of the Black Umvolosi in Zululand, where, according to latest reports (1917), there are twelve which are fortunately strictly preserved. In 1886 two Boers in Northern Mashunaland killed ten, and five were killed in Matabeleland in the same year. After this date they seemed to be extremely rare. I saw the tracks of one near the Sabi in 1893, and the same year Mr. Coryndon killed one in Northern Mashunaland.
When he reached the high plateau of Mashunaland and got to the Umfule and Umniati rivers Selous found game plentiful, and was soon busy collecting specimens. After a visit to the Zweswi he passed on to the Lundaza, a tributary of the Umfule. Here he found a large herd of elephants. He was, however, badly mounted on a sulky horse, as his favourite Nelson had been injured, and this greatly handicapped him, as well as causing him twice to have some hairbreadth escapes.
On the great day on which he killed six elephants he had numerous adventures. First he shot at and wounded a large bull which he could not follow, as an old cow charged him viciously and gradually overhauled his sulky horse; but on entering thick bush he avoided her and soon got to work on two fresh bulls which he killed. He then dashed after the broken herd and soon came face to face with an old cow, who chased him so hard that he had to leap off his horse to avoid her. Curiously enough, the elephant did not molest his horse, but getting the wind of the hunter, charged him and was eventually killed. Selous then followed the retreating herd, and only at first succeeded in wounding two large cows, one of which charged him, when he had again to abandon his horse, but after some trouble he killed them both.
Later, on the Manyami, he found another small herd and killed a big bull and a cow. The bull charged him fiercely but swung off on receiving a frontal shot, and was then killed with a heart shot. Later in the year he went south to the Sabi and was lucky enough to kill five Liechtenstein's hartebeest, which he had failed to get on his previous hunt for them.
In December he returned to Bulawayo. On the way, whilst travelling with Collison, James Dawson, and Cornelis van Rooyen, a noted Boer hunter, an incident occurred which showed the power of a sable antelope in defending itself from dogs. Van Rooyen fired at a bull, and all the dogs rushed from the waggon to bring the wounded animal to bay. When the hunter got up and killed the sable it was found that the gallant antelope in defending itself with its scimitar-like horns had killed outright four valuable dogs and badly wounded four more. The strength and rapidity with which a sable bull uses its horns is a wonderful thing to see. When cornered either by a lion or dogs the sable lies down and induces the enemy to attack its flanks. Then like a flash the horns are swept sideways and the attacker pierced. I lost my best dog by a wounded bull in 1893. He was killed in an instant, both horns going right through the whole body, between heart and lungs. In the same year I found in a dying condition a splendid bull sable, badly mauled by a lion, and incapable of rising, but the lion himself, an old male, was found dead about a hundred yards away by some Shangan natives. I saw the claws and teeth of this lion, but the skin was not preserved as the lion had been dead some days when it was found. There is little doubt that both the sable and the roan antelopes are dangerous when cornered. A Matabele warrior was killed by a wounded cow sable in 1892, and Sergeant Chawner of the Mashunaland police was in 1890 charged by a slightly wounded bull roan which missed the rider but struck his horse through the neck and so injured it that it had to be shot. A similar incident also happened to Mr. George Banks in 1893.