Though We Are Now Approaching The Portuguese Settlement,
The Country Is Still Full Of Large Game.
My men killed six buffalo calves
out of a herd we met.
The abundance of these animals, and also of antelopes,
shows the insufficiency of the bow and arrow to lessen their numbers.
There are also a great many lions and hyaenas, and there is no check
upon the increase of the former, for the people, believing that
the souls of their chiefs enter into them, never attempt to kill them;
they even believe that a chief may metamorphose himself into a lion,
kill any one he chooses, and then return to the human form;
therefore, when they see one, they commence clapping their hands,
which is the usual mode of salutation here. The consequence is,
that lions and hyaenas are so abundant that we see little huts
made in the trees, indicating the places where some of the inhabitants
have slept when benighted in the fields. As numbers of my men frequently left
the line of march in order to take out the korwes from their nests,
or follow the honey-guides, they excited the astonishment of our guides,
who were constantly warning them of the danger they thereby incurred
from lions. I was often considerably ahead of the main body of my men
on this account, and was obliged to stop every hour or two; but,
the sun being excessively hot by day, I was glad of the excuse for resting.
We could make no such prodigious strides as officers in the Arctic regions
are able to do.
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