3 70 A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS ch. 



The following morning my boys returned from 

 the waggons, bringing with them my other horse. 

 His lameness had been caused by a stump of wood 

 sticking into the quick of the off hind hoof, and the 

 place being not yet quite healed up, I extemporised a 

 shoe, made from the outside skin of an elephant's ear, 

 lacing it up to a piece of soft leather fastened loosely 

 round the fetlock. This shoe put on wet overnight 

 used to dry hard to the shape of the foot by 

 morning, but I had to renew it every other day, as 

 the horse's weight soon wore it through. 



On the 20th we again found fresh spoor, in a 

 thick grove of mahobo-hobo trees, and followed it a 

 long way, but the elephants eventually got our wind, 

 having doubled back parallel to their track, and when 

 we found this out they had already got a long start, 

 and although we galloped after them, we could not 

 hold the spoor well, and at last lost it altogether. 



The following day we got fresh spoor once more, 

 and again lost it in much the same way. The 

 elephants in this country are too clever by half ; for 

 instance, these last, as soon as they scented us, instead 

 of running in a body, as any decent, sober-minded 

 elephants would have done, in which case we might 

 have galloped on their spoor, scattered in all direc- 

 tions, in ones, and twos, and threes. In trying to 

 follow them we got separated, and Wood and I, 

 after hallooing in vain for our friends, made for our 

 camp on the Umsengaisi, thinking they would do 

 the same. 



We w^ere riding along an old footpath, through a 

 patch of leafless bush, when I saw some large black 

 objects that I at first thought were buffaloes, but 

 very soon made out to be elephants. We were 

 about eighty yards from them when the foremost saw 



