HUNTING is a good deal like the description of a sham battle given by a raw recruit. "Fifteen miles of walking and fifteen minutes of shooting."

The actual shooting done with the bow, on one of our morning walks, is surprisingly little. It is true, of course, that the archer has one advantage; he can practice as he strolls along, and we often start the day with a dozen or more tentative arrows, to get our muscles in proper coordination for the real test.

Having selected what bow we want for the day, and having sharpened every broadhead in the quiver, and buckled on the arm guard and slung the quiver belt over our shoulder, we are ready to start the hunt. One or two natives, armed with bow and arrows or a spear, and carrying our canteen, camera and emergency surgical supplies, are ready to accompany us.

Dawn is blushing violently as the naked sun appears over the horizon; the birds are chipper; the gazelles leap about in the dewy grass or stand gazing at us in dazed innocence as we file out into the land of adventure. We do not talk, partly because of the lack of a common language, and partly because this is the immemorial custom of hunters. The human voice carries a long way.

Now as a hunter walks along he has plenty of time to think and he must observe everything. Some men are natural born trackers, and their eyes are never off the ground: they seldom see game; others are landscape critics and see only the pictures before them; but the keen hunter looks at every object as though it concealed game or was game or had something to do with game.

If a man is only part hunter and quite a large part nature lover, he gets more out of his expedition than what falls to his bag. This is particularly necessary if he be an archer, because his bag will be small, though his enjoyment may be large. I must admit that the bow is more a companion in woodland pleasure than an engine of destruction; that's one reason why we like it.

So we sally forth to archer land, down the swale, along the river bank, through the wet tall grass and soon we are threading our cautious way in the maze of tangled vines, reeds and conglomerate vegetation. You would think that getting wet to your waist in this rampant verdure, might be unpleasant; but it is not, there are so many compensations.

If you are sensitive to delicate odors you find delight in the fairy-like fragrance of the grass in the donga. Very few of these plants have I been able to identify by sight. The faint aromas are ephemeral and intangible. Some flowers exist: I've seen the convolvulus and a delicate sweet pea, and the tiny blossoms of the mimosa tree, and orchids high up in the overhanging palm leaves, but there are more than these. And as they are elusive to the eye, so they are correspondingly exquisite to the sense of smell; they are elfland incense.

And how often have I wished I were a botanist, a geologist, a comparative anatomist and an ornithologist.

These very grasses entrance me. There are so many. Some I seem to recognize: bunch grass, buffalo grass, marsh grass, elephant grass, tall and like bamboo. The common grass of the veldt looks like Bermuda grass, with long vine-like runners or suckers, and growing with it is a dry dusty grass having tall stems supporting masses of tangled linear leaves, looking more like a snarl of thread than anything else. Wild oats are everywhere and couch grass and sorrel and clover and familiar weeds whose names I do not know. In great profusion in certain areas the deadly nightshade, or belladonna plant, grows in some places to the size of small dagger-like sisal and aloe blades, ready to wound you should you enter. And every bush seems to carry a thorn to puncture or incise your flesh. But these we learn to avoid and ignore.

As we steal through this botanical garden, we see the small life of the jungle. Birds of dazzling yellow and blue or slim green frogs that leap high out of the matted undergrowth and land yards away, always toward the river.

Perhaps you suddenly drop into a deep wart hog hole, and thank your guardian Fate that your joints are firm, your bones well calcified and your ligaments all gristle and tough.

Down in the bed of the river, which now stands in brackish pools, sometimes slowly trickling over volcanic bed rock, but deep in shadow and cool, you creep upon a water buck who stands breast-high in lush grass, feeding unaware. Now there is a beautiful beast in this land of ungainly creatures! The water buck is truly admirable; of splendid proportions, some-thing like our mule tail deer but chunkier. His homs are long and curved slightly forward, his pelt is thick and dark brown, his gait is graceful and swift when need be. I like him! But he is very wary. As yet we have not landed him with the bow.