en
spot where no one can approach him without being detected by his wary
eye. However, you have this in your favour, that his stupidity is
superior to his extreme caution. If a wagon should chance to move along
far to windward of him, he evidently thinks it is trying to circumvent
him, for instead of making off to leeward, as he might easily do, he
rushes up to windward with the intention of passing _ahead_ of the
wagon, and sometimes passes so near the front oxen that one may get a
shot at the silly thing. I have seen this stupidity of his taken
advantage of when he was feeding in a valley open at both ends. A
number of men would commence running as if to cut off his retreat from
the end through which the wind came, and although he had the whole
country hundreds of miles before him by going to the other end, he
rushed madly on to get past the men, and so was speared, for it is one
of his peculiarities that he never swerves from the course he has once
adopted, but rushes wildly and blindly forward, anxious only to increase
his speed. Sometimes a horseman may succeed in killing him by cutting
across his undeviating course. It is interesting to notice a
resemblance between this huge bird and our English wild duck or plover.
I have several times seen newly-hatched young in charge of a
cock-ostrich who made a very good attempt at appearing lame in order to
draw off the attention of pursuers. The young squat down and remain
immoveable, when too small to run far, but they attain a wonderful
degree of speed when about the size of common fowls. It requires the
utmost address of the bushmen, creeping for miles on their stomach, to
stalk them successfully; yet the quantity of feathers collected annually
shows that the numbers slain must be considerable, as each bird has only
a few feathers in the wings and tail."

"Well," observed the major, shaking the ashes out of his pipe, "your
account of the bird makes me hope that we shall fall in with him before
our expedition is over."

"Do you mean to be out long?"

"As long as we can manage, which will be a considerable time," answered
the major, "because we are well supplied with everything, except, I
regret to say, medicine. The fact is that none of us thought much about
that, for we have always been in such a robust state of health that we
have scarce believed in the possibility of our being knocked down; but
the first few weeks of our journey hither taught some of us a l