the main food
supply to the traveller; and at present is probably increasing slightly,
certainly holding its own. Whatever toll the sportsman or traveller take
is as nothing compared to what he might take if he were an unscrupulous
game hog. If his cartridges and his shoulder held out, he could easily
kill a hundred animals a day instead of the few he requires. In that
sense, then, no man slaughters indiscriminately. During the course of
a year he probably shoots from two hundred to two hundred and fifty
beasts, provided he is travelling with an ordinary sized caravan. This,
the experts say, is about the annual toll of one lion. If the traveller
gets his lion, he plays even with the fauna of the country; if he
gets two or more lions, he has something to his credit. This probably
explains why the game is still so remarkably abundant near the road and
on the very outskirts of the town.

We were now much in need of a fair quantity of meat, both for immediate
consumption of our safari, and to make biltong or jerky. Later, in like
circumstances, we should have sallied forth in a businesslike fashion,
dropped the requisite number of zebra and hartebeeste as near camp as
possible, and called it a job. Now, however, being new to the game, we
much desired good trophies in variety. Therefore, we scoured the
country far and wide for desirable heads; and the meat waited upon the
acquisition of the trophy.

This, then, might be called our first Shooting Camp. Heretofore we had
travelled every day. Now the boys settled down to what the native porter
considers the height of bliss: a permanent camp with plenty to eat. Each
morning we were off before daylight, riding our horses, and followed by
the gunbearers, the syces, and fifteen or twenty porters. The country
rose from the river in a long gentle slope grown with low brush and
scattered candlestick euphorbias. This slope ended in a scattered range
of low rocky buttes. Through any one of the various openings between
them, we rode to find ourselves on the borders of an undulating grass
country of low rounded hills with wide valleys winding between them. In
these valleys and on these hills was the game.

Daylight of the day I would tell about found us just at the edge of the
little buttes. Down one of the slopes the growing half light revealed
two oryx feeding, magnificent big creatures, with straight rapier horns
three feet in length. These were most exciting and desirable, so off
m