X REMARKABLE EXPERIENCE 185 



greater part of the meat of the two buffaloes amongst 

 them, I again made a start up the river in search of 

 elephants. 



I will here make an extract verbatim from my 

 diary, written on the spot, and then give an account 

 (explain it I cannot) of a very curious experience 

 that happened to me : — 



" Monday^ August 24. — Shot two elephant cows. 



" Tuesday. — Went to chop out the tusks of the 

 two elephants, but found that one had got up in the 

 night and gone off. As I gave her two four-ounce 

 bullets behind the head as she lay on the ground, I 

 cannot understand it at all. I followed on the spoor 

 till sundown to no purpose, and did not get back to 

 the river till midnight, half dead from thirst." 



I will now give a fuller account of this incident. 



A little after mid-day we crossed the spoor of a 

 large herd of elephant cows that had come down to 

 the river to drink during the preceding night. As 

 I knew, from former experience, that the elephants 

 about here seldom stood except at long distances 

 from the river, I did not for a moment imagine, it 

 being already so late, that it would be worth while 

 following them ; but, wishing to reconnoitre the 

 neighbouring jungle, to see if there were much spoor 

 about, I told my Kafirs to make a camp and dry the 

 meat they were carrying, and then struck off into the 

 forest, accompanied only by my two gun-carriers. 

 Hellhound and Arotsy. Just along the river's bank 

 ran a strip of very dense jungle, perhaps half a mile 

 broad, beyond which was open grassy forest, inter- 

 spersed with patches of thick bush. 



Shortly after emerging from this belt we again 

 crossed the spoor (which I had not been following), 

 and walked along it for a few hundred yards, when 



