red ends before I was through. The old lioness hung around
within a hundred yards or so below, and the buffalo herd, returning,
filed by above, pausing to stamp and snort at the fire. Finally, about
nine o'clock, I made out two lanterns bobbing up to me through the
trees.

The last incident to be selected from many experiences with buffaloes
took place in quite an unvisited district over the mountains from the
Loieta Plains. For nearly two months we had ranged far in this lovely
upland country of groves and valleys and wide grass bottoms between
hills, hunting for greater kudu. One day we all set out from camp to
sweep the base of a range of low mountains in search of a good specimen
of Newman's hartebeeste, or anything else especially desirable that
might happen along. The gentle slope from the mountains was of grass cut
by numerous small ravines grown with low brush. This brush was so scanty
as to afford but indifferent cover for anything larger than one of the
small grass antelopes. All the ravines led down a mile or so to a deeper
main watercourse paralleling the mountains. Some water stood in the
pools here; and the cover was a little more dense, but consisted at best
of but a "stringer" no wider than a city street. Flanking the stringer
were scattered high bushes for a few yards; and then the open country.
Altogether as unlikely a place for the shade-loving buffalo as could be
imagined.

We collected our Newmanii after rather a long hunt; and just at noon,
when the heat of the day began to come on, we wandered down to the water
for lunch. Here we found a good clear pool and drank. The boys began to
make themselves comfortable by the water's edge; C. went to superintend
the disposal of Billy's mule. Billy had sat down beneath the shade of
the most hospitable of the bushes a hundred feet or so away, and was
taking off her veil and gloves. I was carrying to her the lunch box.
When I was about halfway from where the boys were drinking at the
stream's edge to where she sat, a buffalo bull thrust his head from the
bushes just the other side of her. His head was thrust up and forward,
as he reached after some of the higher tender leaves on the bushes. So
close was he that I could see plainly the drops glistening on his moist
black nose. As for Billy, peacefully unwinding her long veil, she seemed
fairly under the beast.

I had no weapon, and any moment might bring some word or some noise that
would catch the animal's