[52] As an instance of this I may mention that the greater number of the "hunting" Boers I lived with and knew well were captured in the Middelburg district in 1900 by a party of Steinacker's horse, who surprised the commando at dawn. All were captured except Commandant Roelef Van Staden, my former hunter, one of the finest men it has ever been my good fortune to meet in any land. He fought his way out single-handed and escaped. When brought into camp these Boers were well treated by Colonel Greenhill-Gardyne (Gordon Highlanders), who asked them if they knew me, to which they replied that I was the only Englishman they had ever known and that they would consider it a favour if he would kindly send a message of friendship to me, detailing their capture and certain misfortunes that had befallen some of their families in the war. They were also particularly anxious that I should know that Van Staden had escaped. This letter I treasure, for it shows that the Boers have no personal animosity to those who have once been their friends. [53] This is very unusual, for in four seasons' hunting there, I never found the deer move at so early a date as September 15th. [54] On the hills of Genna Gentu, the principal home of the Mouflon in Sardinia, the native shepherds allow their cattle and herds of sheep and goats to graze amongst the wild sheep and this constant disturbance keeps all creatures constantly on the move. [55] Later he was persuaded to lend his heads for the exhibition, but few visitors saw the collection. [56] I was so fortunate as to kill one of these caribou in the Tanzilla Mountains on the borders of Alaska, with fifty-three points, in 1908, but this was quite an exceptional head of an unusual type. [57] This year I was hunting in the Gander forests about 75 miles south-east of King George IV Lake and saw an immense number of caribou stags, but only one with a first-class head, a 35-pointer, which I was fortunate enough to kill. Later in the season I saw most of the heads killed in the island and there was not a good one amongst them. CHAPTER XI 1906-1907