. Two African trips, with notes and suggestions on big game preservation in Africa; . mportance, with silence. Behindthe Hill camp the thicket was continuous for up a fresh trail of the morning, it would lead fora time by one of their beaten game-paths towards theeast, then diverging along a lesser one, where progresswas increasingly difficult, it would sooner or later entera continuous cane-brake of apparently unlimited a silent advance was almost impossible ; the dry,brittle canes of last year, ten feet long, some of whichwere erect and others laid flat, cracked at t
. Two African trips, with notes and suggestions on big game preservation in Africa; . mportance, with silence. Behindthe Hill camp the thicket was continuous for up a fresh trail of the morning, it would lead fora time by one of their beaten game-paths towards theeast, then diverging along a lesser one, where progresswas increasingly difficult, it would sooner or later entera continuous cane-brake of apparently unlimited a silent advance was almost impossible ; the dry,brittle canes of last year, ten feet long, some of whichwere erect and others laid flat, cracked at the leastprovocation. There was no air moving, and soundseemed magnified in the quivering heat. A strong bovinesmell pervaded the place, and, moving forward withextreme caution, I more than once heard the ponderouscreatures moving sleepily about; indeed, I must have beenwithin twenty or thirty yards of them—near enough atleast to hear them breathing, and the low moo of a cowto her calf; but even the most cautious attempt to pushaside the intervening screen was followed by a noisy. 0 z< ? <-i THE WHITE NILE 83 stampede. Once only I caught sight of a portion of blackhide, and that appeared to belong to a young andinexperienced animal. Thus I came to the conclusionthat they were unapproachable by day from this camp,and that my chance lay in creeping near them by moon-lioht when feeding on the open grass, as we had first seenthem doing. To use a rifle with effect by moonlight, even thebrightest, is much more difficult than might be me at least the foresight in that light is quite invisibleand the backsight nearly so, but if a piece of white plasteras large as a finger-nail be fastened below the foresightit catches the faint light, and this, if slowly loweredtill it just disappears behind the backsight, affords arough kind of alignment—sufficient at least for a bigbeast at close quarters. The moon, which was a littlepast the full, would rise at eleven oclock, an
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjecthunting, bookyear1902
