“Please tell us about it,” said one of the boys.
“I was taking a walk in the fields a few miles from Cairo,” said Mr. Graham, “and carried nothing except a small walking stick. While I was looking at the grasses and the fields of cotton and douro, and watching the pigeons circling in the air, I heard all at once the shouting of the natives to indicate something unusual. Looking around I saw that a buffalo was coming directly toward me and was not more than a hundred feet away. His head was lowered and it was very evident that I was to be the object of his attack.
“I had to think and act very quickly, as none of the natives were near enough to divert the attention of the brute. There was no fence near and no building or enclosure in which I could find safety.
“Close by me was a field of cotton, the bushes being as high as my head. Into this field I ran, and once in its shelter I doubled on my pursuer and ran the way that both of us had come. Then I met the crowd of natives that were trying to catch the runaway animal and they soon had him secured. A friend of mine in Egypt that same year only saved himself by firing a charge of shot directly at the buffalo's eyes when the creature was not more than ten yards away. He was compelled to pay for the destruction of the animal, as it was very properly argued that he was a trespasser in the field where the buffalo was grazing. You may be sure that he was careful after that not to go where he had no right to be, especially if there was a likelihood of encountering buffaloes.
“A very pugnacious variety of the buffalo is the South African one. He has large horns, that spread out at the base so as to form a sort of helmet that is impenetrable for a bullet or for any other missile smaller than a cannon shot. The African buffalo is found all the way from Guinea to the Cape of Good Hope, and is often called the Cape buffalo. He lives in large herds in the forests, though he sometimes comes into the open plains, where he is more cautious and less quarrelsome than when in the woods. The natives hunt the Cape buffalo, but very often the animal shows so much fight that he becomes the hunter and drives his assailants away. Not infrequently he kills some of them with his powerful horns, and also with his feet, which he uses with great alertness. A single buffalo has been known to resist successfully a hundred natives armed with spears; since the introduction of fire-arms the numbers of the Cape buffalo have diminished, as he is unable to stand against the weapons of civilization any more than can his American namesake.
“We'll go from the cows to sheep at our next talk,” said Mr. Graham to the youths, “and in the meantime please look at the books, and when we sit down to discuss them you may tell what you have found.”
In the language of Parliamentarians “the meeting then adjourned,” and the boys proceeded to look at Cassell's Natural History and other books for information on the topic which they were next to consider.
