Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/338

310 had he not caught hold of some strong roots of a tree shooting out of the bank; and there he lay in perfect safety from the enemy, till our servants went round, and brought him out of the pool on the further side.

the mean time, the buffalo, mortally wounded, seeing his enemy had escaped, kept his eyes intent upon us, who were about forty yards from him, walking backwards towards us, with intent to turn suddenly upon the nearest horse; when Ayto Confu ordered two men with guns to shoot him through the head, and he instantly fell. The two we first killed were females; this last was a bull, and one of the largest, confessedly, that had ever been seen. Though not fat, I guess he weighed nearer fifty than forty stone. His horns from the root, following the line of their curve, were about fifty-two inches, and nearly nine where thickest in the circumference. They were flat, not round. Ayto Confu ordered the head to be cut off, and cleared of its flesh, so that the horns and skeleton of the head only remained; this he hung up in his great hall among the probosces of elephants, and horns of rhinoceroses, with this inscription in his own language, "Yogoube the Kipt killed this upon the Bedowi."

We were now within sight of home, to which we went straight without further hunting. Neither the ridicule nor the condolence of the young men could force one word from Ammonios; only when I asked him whether or not he was hurt, he answered from the scripture, "He that loveth danger shall perish in it." But at night Ozoro Esther, either really or feignedly, expressing herself as displeased with her son Ayto Confu, Ammonios, who loved the young man sincerely, could not bear to be the occasion of this; so