FOOTNOTES:
[3] "The Land of Footprints."
X.
THE SABLE.
About three o'clock I began to feel rested and ambitious. Therefore I
called up our elegant guide and Memba Sasa, and set out on my first hunt
for sable. F. was rather more done up by the hard morning, and so did
not go along. The guide wore still his red tarboosh, his dark short
jacket, his saffron yellow nether garment--it was not exactly a
skirt--and his silver-headed rattan cane. The only change he made was to
tuck up the skirt, leaving his long legs bare. It hardly seemed
altogether a suitable costume for hunting; but he seemed to know what he
was about.
We marched along ridges, and down into ravines, and across gulleys
choked with brush. Horrible thickets alternated with and occasionally
surrounded open green meadows hanging against the side hills. As we
proceeded, the country became rougher, the ravines more precipitous. We
struggled up steep hills, fairly bucking our way through low growth that
proved all but impenetrable. The idea was to find a sable feeding in one
of the little open glades; but whenever I allowed myself to think of the
many adverse elements of the game, the chances seemed very slim. It took
a half-hour to get from one glade to the next; there were thousands of
glades. The sable is a rare shy animal that likes dense cover fully as
well if not better than the open. Sheer rank bull luck alone seemed the
only hope.
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