United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Thus a German huntsman will stick a nail taken from a coffin into the fresh spoor of the quarry, believing that this will hinder the animal from escaping. The aborigines of Victoria put hot embers in the tracks of the animals they were pursuing. Hottentot hunters throw into the air a handful of sand taken from the footprints of the game, believing that this will bring the animal down.
Of course, after this there was nothing else to be done, so, having summoned the scratched Scowl, who seemed to have no heart in the business, we started on the spoor of the herd, which was as easy to track as a wagon road. "Never mind, Baas," said Scowl, "they are two hours' march off by now."
They went in the same direction as upon the preceding day, towards the forest or "bush," as they termed it. They had not proceeded a mile when they came upon the spoor of elephants nearly fresh. It passed through the very thickest of the thorny jungle where no creature but an elephant, a rhinoceros, or a man with an axe, could have made way.
Searching among these with my eyes, presently I perceived the light gleaming upon what I knew must be the points of spears projecting above the level of the ground vapour. "Those devils are after us by the lower road," I said to Anscombe, adding, "I heard them pass the old cattle kraal last night. They followed our spoor over the edge of the hill, but in the dark lost it among the stones."
Also only a few of them here, rest of army come later and try rush us to-morrow morning before dawn. That Asiki custom." "Then what shall we do, Jeekie? Run for it or stop here?" "Think must stop here, Major. If we bolt, carrying Miss Barbara, who can't walk much, they follow on spoor and catch us. Best stick inside this fence and see what happen.
It was not necessary that he enter each habitation through a door, a window or an open chink, his nose told him whether or not his prey lay within. For some time he found one disappointment following upon the heels of another in quick succession. No spoor of the Belgian was discernible. But at last he came to a tent where the smell of the thief was strong.
At first there had been the spoor of wild beasts over the footprints of Jane Clayton, while upon the top of all Rokoff's spoor showed that he had passed over the trail after the animals had left their records upon the ground.
Some say that the ostrich is inconceivably stupid, but others will not accept such a severe condemnation. The traveller Schillings, who is noted for his photographs of big game in Africa taken at night by flashlight, once followed the spoor of some lions for several hours. Suddenly he came upon an ostrich's nest with newly hatched chickens, and he wondered where the parents were.
Such were the thoughts that tortured him, as he urged Congo and the dog to greater haste, in following the spoor through the forest. The forest which Willem at first feared might be miles in extent, proved to be but a mere strip of timber, through which he soon passed, discovering an open plain on the other side.
Yet ever since the capture of the rhinoceros on the moving day of March 20th we had thoroughly swept the land in the vicinity of the Soda Swamp without finding even a single spoor. The blurred effect of the unique illustrations to this article is accounted for by the extreme difficulty of reproducing from a cinematograph film. It simply meant that the lions were not there.
Word Of The Day