Life of Frederick Courtenay Selous, D.S.O., Capt. 25th Royal Fusiliers
John Stuart Mill · en
In Delagoa Bay Selous was fortunate enough to meet a certain colonist
named Wissels, who owned a small trading station near the junction of
the Pongolo and Usutu rivers, right in the heart of the habitat of the
Nyala. Wissels was returning home next day in his sea-going boat and
Selous made some swift preparations and accompanied him. In two days he
reached the Maputa and proceeded overland, with three women carriers, to
Wissels' station, where he found numerous freshly captured skins and
horns of the animal he had come to hunt. For the next few days, in
pouring rain, he crept through the bush with native hunters, and was
fortunate enough to bag three fine male and two female Nyala, a pair of
which are now in the Natural History Museum in London; the heads of the
two other males are in the collection at Worplesdon. He was somewhat
disappointed not to shoot the rare little Livingstone's Suni, one of
which he saw, as it was one of the few rare antelopes he did not
possess. After a long tramp of eighty miles through deep sand he reached
Delagoa Bay on October 7th, and then returned to Kimberley, and so to
England, not, however, completely escaping the inevitable attacks of
fever which are the lot of all who hunt the Nyala in the feverish swamps
and thickets of the East Coast.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] This unfortunate gentleman went to hunt hippopotami at the mouth of
the Limpopo. Neither he nor any members of his outfit were ever heard of
again and they may have been wiped out by the Matabele.
[47] Lobengula's native name.