Chatterbox, 1906

by Various

STORIES FROM AFRICA.

XI.—A MIGHTY HUNTER.

UR African picture-gallery would be quite incomplete without a thought of the Dark Continent as the land of great beasts, the home of those kings among the wild creatures who can never be made the servants or the friends of man; the land where the roar of the lion wakes the dark hours, and the elephant and buffalo steal down to drink at the muddy pools. And so our next story must be of one of those mighty hunters of half a century ago who went to Africa for pastime, long before any one dreamt of a Cape to Cairo railway. William Cotton Oswell was a sportsman of the best type, six feet in height, wiry and muscular, a magnificent rider and a dead shot. He spent five years in Africa without a day's illness, was absolutely fearless, and, withal, so gentle and kindly of heart that he won the love of every one, English or African, with whom he came in contact; and he was so modest that his adventures were known only to intimate friends.

'I am sorry for the fine old beasts I shot,' he said, looking back, a grandfather and a quiet English gentleman, to the old wild hunting days; and if, as the chroniclers tell us, William the Conqueror 'loved the high deer as if he were their father,' so his nineteenth-century namesake had a warm corner in his heart for the lion and the buffalo, and the great, clumsy, fierce rhinoceros, against which he matched himself so successfully.

In 1844, Mr. Oswell, who had been sent to South Africa to recruit, after fever contracted in India, started on a hunting expedition with Major Murray as his companion, visiting on the way Dr. Livingstone's settlement at Mabotse, and getting information from him as to the country and the game to be found there. The doctor was a better naturalist than he was a sportsman; he had the keen observation indispensable to the hunter, but never became a good shot. He gave his visitors, however, all the help and information he could, and they passed on into what was, in those days, an almost untrodden land for sportsmen, alive with game of every kind. Mr. Oswell says that a man who was anything of a shot could easily feed a party of six hundred by his own gun. Still, there might be some risk connected with the securing of the dinner, and the hunter might have to ask, like the primitive savage, not only, 'Can I kill it?' but 'Will it kill me?'

On one occasion Mr. Oswell walked unexpectedly into the middle of a herd of buffaloes, who scattered in all directions. Only one patriarch of the herd, who had been lying apart from the rest, stood his ground, and the young Englishman found himself facing the great beast, at a distance of ten yards, with but one barrel of his gun loaded. He gave the contents of this to the buffalo, but did not reach a vital part, and the animal charged him. Mr. Oswell was standing under one of the mimosa-trees which grow plentifully in this part of the country. He seized a branch and swung himself off the ground, drawing, he says, his knees up to his chin, so that the buffalo actually passed beneath him. The feat sounds almost impossible, but Mr. Oswell tells it in the most matter-of-fact fashion, simply adding that he thought it safer than the usually advised method of springing to one side, as the buffalo can swerve sideways in his charge, and gore his enemy in passing.

Another adventure during this expedition certainly tested the hunter's nerve to the uttermost. Mr. Oswell's men informed him one morning that there was no meat in the camp for the dogs who guarded the party at night; so, taking his gun, with but one barrel loaded, he strolled out in search of a supper for his watchmen, feeling sure of securing something without going to any distance, or needing more ammunition. Nor was he disappointed, for, two hundred yards from the camp, he came upon some quagga, and killed one of them. The animal ran a little distance before it dropped, and Mr. Oswell, after marking it down, went back for men to carry the game home. But in this monotonous country, with its stretches of thorny bush and mimosa-trees, nothing is easier than to miss a track, and Mr. Oswell, though nicknamed by the Kaffirs, 'Jlaga,' the watchful or wide-awake, found himself on this occasion at fault. No waggons or encampment came in sight. He tried to retrace his steps and start again, or, by making a circle, to strike his original track, but all in vain. It had been ten in the morning when he left the camp, and at sunset he was still seeking it, without food, unarmed save for his useless, unloaded gun.

The situation would have been ludicrous had it been less serious; but Mr. Oswell, feeling sure that his friends would seek him at nightfall, followed the track of beasts to a pool of water, and determined to wait there until he should hear some sound of them. The fuel about was scanty, but he collected what he could until the short twilight of the tropics darkened into night, and then, with the idea of saving firewood, climbed a tree. But now the cold became intense. The heat of the day had been followed by sharp frost, and the unfortunate sportsman, with no extra covering, became so numb that he decided to descend from his perch and light his fire. He had clambered down to the lowest bough, and was about to drop to the ground, when something stirred below him. A moving body parted the bushes, and he heard at his feet an unmistakable sound, the pant of a questing lion. Had he dropped a moment sooner, he would have fallen right on to the top of the beast. We need hardly say that he returned very swiftly to his upper story, and, crouching there, could hear distinctly two lions, hunting in a circle round about the water, passing and saluting each other, like sentinels on their beat.

It was a trying situation, certainly, to have to sit, clinging with frozen fingers to the branches, only a few feet above the heads of the other 'mighty hunters,' who seemed to have resumed, in the night hours, their rule of the land he had dared to dispute with them.