In other seasons this locality is comparatively
deserted.
The glass revealing nothing in our line, we rode again to the lower
levels, and again took up our slow, painstaking search.
But although three days went by in this manner without our getting a
glimpse of lions, they were far from being days lost. Minor adventure
filled our hours. What elsewhere would be of major interest and strange
and interesting experience met us at every turn. The game, while
abundant, was very shy. This had nothing to do with distrust of hunters,
but merely with the fact that it was the season of green grass. We liked
to come upon animals unexpectedly, to see them buck-jump and cavort.
Otherwise we rode in a moving space cleared of animals, the beasts
unobtrusively giving way before us, and as unobtrusively closing in
behind. The sun flashed on the spears of savages travelling single file
across the distance. Often we stopped short to gaze upon a wild and
tumbled horizon of storm that Gustave Dore might have drawn.
The dogs were always joyously routing out some beast, desirable from
their point of view, and chasing it hopelessly about, to our great
amusement. Once they ran into a giant porcupine-about the size a setter
would be, with shorter legs-which did not understand running away. They
came upon it in a dense thicket, and the ensuing row was unholy. They
managed to kill the porcupine among them, after which we plucked barbed
quills from some very grieved dogs.
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