VIII FAT ELEPHANT SHOT 163 



with my second gun. The one I had fired at I 

 saw from the first was mortally wounded, and after 

 running 1 50 yards or so she fell dead, shot right 

 through the heart. On cutting her up she proved 

 to be excessively fat ; but though an old cow 

 her tusks were not very large, only weighing 9 lbs. 

 apiece. 



I set the Kafirs to work to chop out the ivory 

 and cut out the heart and inside fit at once, and 

 as, of course, very much Jess time and labour have 

 to be expended on a cow than on a bull elephant 

 (the bones in the head of the latter being not only 

 much larger, but in addition very much harder than 

 in the former), we managed to reach the place 

 where the traps had been left before sundown, and 

 at once made for the bank of the river some few 

 hundred yards distant, in order to camp near the 

 water. 



As we were nearincr the river I observed the 

 figure of a man dressed in European clothes creeping 

 forwards step by step, closely following a Kafir boy 

 who kept pointing forwards, evidently to some sort 

 of game that they were stalking. This I soon made 

 out to be Tofts, Mr. G.'s servant, intent upon stalk- 

 ing a pookoo. So intent was he upon his object that 

 I managed to approach from behind and touch him 

 on the shoulder before he observed me. Our greet- 

 ing frightened away the antelope, which, as I had 

 plenty of good fat elephant meat, did not much 

 matter. 



Tofts told me that Mr. Garden was at his camp 

 about a mile away, but that Captain Garden had 

 gone farther up the river in company with Henry 

 Wall (a Bastard man from Graham's Town, who had 

 entered Mr. Garden's service at Tati, as interpreter 



