SPORTING SCENES

AMONGST

THE KAFFIRS OF SOUTH AFRICA.

BY

CAPT. ALFRED W. DRAYSON,

ROYAL ARTILLERY.

"Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bushboy alone by my side;
Away, away, from the dwellings of men,
By the antelope's haunt and the buffalo's glen;
By valleys remote, where the ourebi plays,
The gnu, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze;
Where the gemsbok and eland unhunted recline,

By the skirts of grey forests o'erhung with wild vine."

ILLUSTRATED BY HARRISON WEIR,

FROM DESIGNS BY THE AUTHOR.

LONDON:

G. ROUTLEDGE & CO. FARRINGDON STREET;
NEW YORK: 18, BEEKMAN STREET.

1858.

THENEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 74411

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. 1897.

PREFACE.

NEARLY every person with whom I have conversed since my return from South Africa, has appeared to take great interest in the Kaffirs, the wild animals, and other inhabitants of that country.

I am not vain enough to suppose that my friends have merely pretended this interest for the sole object of allowing me an opportunity of talking, and have thereby deluded me into a belief of affording amusement. But I really think that the opinions which they have expressed are genuine, and that perhaps the same wish for information on the subject of the Kaffirs, or the wild beasts of the Cape, may be more widely

vi

PREFACE.

extended than I have been able personally to

prove.

Most men who have written on South Africa, have been either sporting giants, scientific men, or travellers who have gone over ground never before trodden by the white man. I am neither of these.

The first I am not, for the blood spilled by me was but a drop compared to the ocean that many have caused to flow in this land.

Unfortunately I am not scientific; but, perhaps, from this very defect, I may become the more intelligible to the general reader of the following pages, who may comprehend my simple names for simple things, rather than those of a polysyllabic character.

I know that I have sunk miserably in the opinion of savans, in consequence of my inability to tell whether or not the Terstræmiaceæ grew luxuriantly in Africa. I only knew that the plains bore beautiful flowers, and I learnt their Kaffir names; that the bush had fine trees,