XVIII DOGS KILLED BY CROCODILES 389 



of our track, which they must have crossed just a 

 little in front of the waggon. Shortly afterwards 

 they must have heard the whip, or the talking of the 

 Kafirs, and, of course, at once decamped. When we 

 reached the place where they had got the alarm, they 

 could not have been gone more than a quarter^of an 

 hour. We followed them up at once at a trot, and 

 were very near them a second time in a thick mahobo- 

 hobo forest ; but, by a sudden turn, they got our 

 wind, and again made off, this time in real earnest. 

 We tried to gallop on the spoor, but the ground was 

 hard in many places, and we could not hold it well, 

 and at last gave it up in despair and rode back to 

 the waggon. Whilst we were following these two 

 elephants, we came upon a black rhinoceros, that did 

 not see us until we were within fifty yards of him, 

 when he turned and trotted off. 



On November 3rd, we again reached our camp at 

 Umfule, having neither seen nor shot anything but a 

 few sable antelopes and tsessebes. One of my dogs 

 also caught a large wild pig and held it fast single- 

 handed until the Kafirs assegaied it. During this 

 trip we lost three good dogs in the Umsengaisi river, 

 all of which were caught by crocodiles. One of them 

 was an old favourite of mine, that six years previously 

 I had rescued from the jaws of a crocodile in the 

 river Gwenia, whose teeth, however, had left some 

 indelible scars upon his hind-quarters. Since that 

 time he had faithfully followed his master's wandering 

 footsteps over many hundreds of miles of wilderness, 

 and had ever done his duty at pulling down wounded 

 game, or catching wild pigs, and could show at least 

 a dozen honourable scars, chiefly administered by the 

 tusks of these latter animals, and now in his old age 

 he had found a damp and dismal grave in the maw 



