. The game animals of Africa . thick bush in which it canlie up in the daytime. The belt offorest beside the waterwa)s may bereplaced by the thick dense bush ofthe big gullies of the plateau-toppedhills of Nigeria. As a rule, these buffaloes goabout in pairs, with perhaps a calf ;but near Lokoya, in Nigeria, atthe junction of the Niger and the Benue rivers, I came across a herd of twenty. They appear to drinkjust before dawn, and then feed slowly either uphill towards the denseshady bush in the hillside gullies, or through the open scattered bushto some other gully, in the deep recesses of whi
. The game animals of Africa . thick bush in which it canlie up in the daytime. The belt offorest beside the waterwa)s may bereplaced by the thick dense bush ofthe big gullies of the plateau-toppedhills of Nigeria. As a rule, these buffaloes goabout in pairs, with perhaps a calf ;but near Lokoya, in Nigeria, atthe junction of the Niger and the Benue rivers, I came across a herd of twenty. They appear to drinkjust before dawn, and then feed slowly either uphill towards the denseshady bush in the hillside gullies, or through the open scattered bushto some other gully, in the deep recesses of which they lie up for theremainder of the day. Throughout West Africa the bush-cow has a reputation forferocity, which I believe to be due more to the imagination of thenatives than to any real danger incurred in hunting these slaying of a bona is considered a great feat by the natives, menbeing occasionally met with who are known as bush-cow a native kills a bull he must retire into his house and remain. Fig. 27.—Skull and Horns of the CongoBuffalo, from a specimen shot by MajorA. J. Arnold. 86 SHEEP there for ten days at the least, whilst his relatives make ju-ju orsacrifices to the spirit of the deceased animal, whereby it is propitiatedand endows its slayer with its own reputed qualities of fierceness andcunning. Should the hunter or his relatives be remiss in thesedevotions, the spirit of the bush-cow enters into the hunter to his owndestruction, and he goes raging mad and dies. Hunting the bush-cow is attended with difficulty, as it is shy andretiring, and when feeding in the open travels at a great pace. Perhapsthe best method is to visit a water-side, not of the big rivers, but of oneof the smaller streams, so soon as daylight permits of tracks beingdiscerned, morning after morning, until fresh tracks of one that has beenrecently to water are seen. The tracks must be followed rapidly, andyet with caution, in the hope* of coming up with the beast
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