The line of retreat kept widening from the numerous small parties that had joined the main body till at length it was two hundred yards broad, and I and John cantered merrily along it over the flat for ten miles, when we entered a dense belt of bush, into which we had not penetrated far when our progress was obstructed by a young bull with small tusks, who seemed inclined to make himself unpleasant. I did not want him and tried to drive him off, but he wouldn’t go, and at last charged down on our horses. This was too much, and I shot him. We pressed on as quickly as possible to the open park-like country of which I could now and again get glimpses, fearing that the shot might have disturbed the rest of the herd if they were within hearing. But I need not have troubled myself, for as I got clear of the bush I came upon at least 400 elephants standing drowsily in the shade of the detached clumps of mimosa-trees.[8] Such a sight I had never seen before and never saw again. As far as the eye could reach, in a fairly open country, there was nothing but elephants. I do not mean in serried masses, but in small separate groups. Lying on the pony’s neck I wormed in and out looking for the bulls whose spoor we had been following, and while doing so was charged by a very tall, long-legged, ugly beast, who would take no denial, and I was obliged to kill him. He was _the_ bull, but, alas! he was without tusks, and probably being defenceless had been driven from the bull herd and taken up with the cows. I did not want any of them, and turned waggonwards, rather disappointed at not getting ivory, but well satisfied with the sight my ride had given me.
In the evening a straight-horned gemsbok (_Oryx capensis_) coming up from the river passed near the camp; her horns struck me as unusually long, and with some of the dogs I gave chase on foot; she moved very slowly, soon stood to bay, and dropped to the shot. She was evidently very old and worn out. I introduce her to air a theory.
In many of the Bushman caves the head of the oryx is scratched in profile, and in that position one horn hides the other entirely. In Syria, even up to the present day, I am told, a very near relation of the _Oryx capensis_ is found; it is the habit of man in his hunting stage to try his hand at delineating the animals he lives upon. Probably the rocks or caves of Syria may show, or formerly may have shown, glyphs of the oryx resembling the work of the African Bushmen, and an early traveller may easily have taken them for representations of an animal with one horn, and have started the idea of the unicorn, Biblical and heraldic. With regard to the former, the word in the Hebrew in our version rendered unicorn is ‘reem’; in some old English Bibles, indeed, ‘reem’ has been preserved in the text untranslated. Again, I am told that the Syrian congener of the Cape oryx is called by the Arabs of to-day ريم ‘reem.’[9] Is it not likely then, that the Biblical Unicorn is the same as the ‘reem’ of the Arab? As an heraldic beast, the gemsbok lends himself most gallantly to the theory; he is a strongly marked equine antelope, and is the one of his family that frequently lowers his head to show fight, it is said even with the lion--and this is confirmed in song, though he certainly got the worst of it in poetry, as I very much think he would in real life.