On the 4th of September, 1871, Selous landed at Algoa Bay with L400 in his pocket. He went there determined to make his way into the interior and to lead the free life of the hunter as described by Gordon Cumming, Baldwin, and others. First he decided to go to the Diamond Fields, and left Port Elizabeth on September 6th with a young transport rider named Reuben Thomas, who conveyed him and his baggage for the sum of eight pounds. After a slow journey of nearly two months he reached his destination. On the road by hunting hard he had managed to kill "one bushbuck ram, one duiker, one springbuck, one klipspringer, and eight grey and red roebucks, all of which I carried on my own shoulders to the waggons." Most unfortunately, however, a valuable double breechloading rifle with which he had been shooting was stolen on the day he reached Kimberley. Next day he bought a horse and rode over to Pniel. There he met Mr. Arthur Lang, and on October 31st went with him on a trading trip through Griqualand, passing down the Vaal and Orange rivers. He found the Bechuanas an industrious race, "but they are the stingiest, most begging, grasping, and disagreeable set of people that it is possible to imagine." He was much disappointed to find the country so bare of game. "The great drawback was that there was no game whatever, not even springbucks, the Kafirs having hunted everything into the far interior, so that now there is more game within five miles of Cape Town than here, where we were more than 600 miles up country." The party returned to the Diamond Fields at the end of March and sold off their produce--cattle, goats, and ostrich feathers at a profit of about L100. Selous then set about his preparations for a journey into the far interior. From a trader he purchased a waggon, a span of young oxen, and five horses. A young fellow named Dorehill and a Mr. Sadlier then agreed to accompany him. The whole party seems to have been very badly armed with indifferent weapons. At the end of April, 1872, Selous and his two friends trekked north and only got as far as Kuruman, a delay of a fortnight being caused through the horses running away. Here Selous met Mr. William Williams, an experienced trader and hunter, from whom he purchased two unprepossessing-looking large-bore elephant guns as used by the Boer native hunters. Cheap as these guns were, about six pounds a-piece and using only common trade gunpowder, they were most effective weapons, for in three seasons with them (1872-1874) Selous killed seventy-eight elephants, all but one of which he shot whilst hunting on foot. He used to load them whilst running at full speed by simply diving his hand into a leather bag of powder slung at his side. "They kicked most frightfully, and in my case the punishment I received from these guns has affected my nerves to such an extent as to have materially influenced my shooting ever since, and I am heartily sorry I ever had anything to do with them."