"My dear Johnny,--I wonder where you are and what you are doing. Some one told me the other day that you were going to Africa on a shooting-trip this year. I had quite an interesting time with MacMillan, and got a few nice things to add to my collection. I got three nice Lesser Koodoos on the lower Gwas N'yiro river as well as Gerenuks, good Beisa, and Impala--though nothing exceptional--very good specimens of the small races of Grant's Gazelle--_notata_ and _Brighti_--Grevy's zebra, the reticulated giraffe, a good bushbuck, a striped hyena, two buffalo bulls, and a lot of Dik-diks (of two distinct species and, I think, possibly three). I don't know whether you have seen two letters of mine in the 'Field'[63] for June 8th and 15th, but if you have, you will have read my account of a rather interesting experience I had with a lion. This was the only lion I actually fired at, though I saw four lionesses one day, and tracked a lion and lioness on another occasion for a long distance and got close to them, but, owing to the thickness of the bush, could not see them. That was the trouble on the lower Gwas N'yiro river. The bush was so frightfully thick along the river, and outside, too, very often, that it required great luck to get a lion in the daytime, and they would not come to baits at night. The bush was simply awful for buffaloes. Let me know what you are doing and I will try and come over to see you one of these days." Selous seems to have been unusually unlucky on the few occasions he met with lions in the Gwas N'yiro bush. On March 2nd, 1912, he suddenly came face to face with a big lion, but as soon as it saw him, it dived into the forest and was immediately lost to view. On another occasion he wounded a pallah buck, which a lion then killed, and death was so recent that Selous sat over "the kill" and waited. The lion came and stood within twenty-five yards of the hunter, who fired two shots at it, and although assured that it was severely wounded he never recovered the body.[64] The most exciting incident, however, of this trip was the killing of what he calls "My Last Buffalo." Near the river he found the tracks of two old buffalo bulls, which he followed industriously for six miles. At last he obtained a snap shot and hit one of the bulls badly through the lungs. After following the wounded animal a short distance, he suddenly heard the unmistakable grunts which always precede a charge. "The next instant the buffalo was on us, coming over the edge of the gully with nose outstretched, half a ton of bone and muscle driven at tremendous speed by the very excusable rage and fury of a brave and determined animal.... When I fired, the muzzle of my rifle must have been within three yards of the buffalo." The buffalo fell to the shot, the vertebrae of the neck being struck, and as he fell struck Elani the Somali.