Upon the return march from Bushman's River, I was nearly having to pass the night in the open country, without dinner, supper, or blankets. Finding the slow pace of the waggons very disagreeable, and the road dull and uninteresting, I proposed to a Lieutenant G--, of the party, to join me in a little detour in the surrounding country. We left the road, and riding at right angles to the line of its direction, continued our journey in a supposed parallel direction to the road, after a dive into the plain of about three miles. Now it so happened that when we left, the road pointed nearly south, but shortly after it turned to the east; thus, when we fancied that we were moving in a parallel direction, we were in fact going directly away from it. We rode on quietly, taking a bread-and-cheese luncheon from our pockets, and seeing only a few ourebis, that were, however, very wild, until our attention was drawn to a moving object by the side of a grassy watercourse. Watching this object carefully, we soon saw it was a leopard, and rode towards it quietly, so as not to cause an alarm, if possible, until we were near it. When within about sixty yards, the animal saw us, and crouched down in the grass. Having my favourite gun, the left barrel of which threw a bullet with the precision of a rifle, I fired at the leopard as I saw it crouching; it scarcely moved, and the bullet threw up no dust, convincing me by this one circumstance that I had hit the animal. We rode up to where it lay, and I was about dismounting and walking up to the spot, when, just as my foot was out of the stirrup, the leopard jumped up, gave a snarl, and bounded off, apparently safe and sound. Both our horses reared and turned round, and, before I could arrange matters, and bring my second barrel to bear, the leopard looked beautifully small at the distance of three hundred yards. I pitched, a bullet, however, just over him, with, of course, no result.