I Could Not Order My Men To Do What I Would Not Do Myself,
But, Though I Tried To Justify Myself On The Plea Of Necessity,
I Could Not Adopt This Mode Of Hunting.
If your object is to secure
the best specimens for a museum, it may be allowable, and even
deserving
Of commendation, as evincing a desire to kill only those
really wanted; but if, as has been practiced by some Griquas and others
who came into the country after Mr. Cumming, and fired away indiscriminately,
great numbers of animals are wounded and allowed to perish miserably,
or are killed on the spot and left to be preyed on by vultures and hyenas,
and all for the sole purpose of making a "bag", then I take it to be evident
that such sportsmen are pretty far gone in the hunting form of insanity.
My men shot a black rhinoceros in this way, and I felt glad to get away
from the only place in which I ever had any share in night-hunting.
We passed over the immense pan Ntwetwe, on which the latitude could be taken
as at sea. Great tracts of this part of the country are of calcareous tufa,
with only a thin coating of soil; numbers of "baobab" and "mopane" trees
abound all over this hard, smooth surface. About two miles beyond
the northern bank of the pan we unyoked under a fine specimen of the baobab,
here called, in the language of Bechuanas, Mowana; it consisted of
six branches united into one trunk.
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