102 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA The tired Boer snored serenely at night behind the bulwark of his wagons, regardless of the wild beasts prowling and sniff­ing outside. The giggling calls of the gray and brown jackals, the doleful howl of the slinking hyena, even the deep breathing sough of the lurking lion, did not open his eyes, and it must be a fiercely menacing roar indeed that would lift his head. His only haunting dread was the crippling of his march by the deadly tsetse fly or the wasting diseases that made his horses and oxen the prey of the vulture.
	In the passage of these pioneers the destruction of wild ani­mals of all kinds was enormous, partly for the sake of needful food, and partly for the skins, but much wantonly and waste-fully, for the Boer would rarely let pass a living mark for his rifle. Of lesser game there was no attempt to keep tally, but by a common report thousands of lions were shot in the march to the Transvaal. Any such reckoning must be largely guesswork, though there is no doubt that few beasts within range escaped with­out the sting of a bullet. But a foe more formidable than any multitude of lions sought to bar the progress of the Great Trek. The revolting Umsilikazi was the first of the great Zulu chiefs to try the temper and the arms of these pioneers. One