CHAP. XV THE GOOD OLD DAYS 271 



and savagery seemed so firmly established through- 

 out all the territory between the Limpopo and the 

 Zambesi that I never dreamt I should live to see 

 the destruction of that great chief's far-reaching 

 power, and the defeat and dispersal of his brave 

 but barbarous tribesmen, to be quickly followed 

 by the founding of a European town near the site 

 of the old native "great place," and the building 

 of a railway through the wilderness to the north. 



Ah ! but the old days were the best, after all — 

 or at any rate I think so. The traveller by rail to 

 the Victoria Falls will journey at his ease, it is true, 

 in a saloon carriage, with plenty to eat and drink, 

 through seemingly endless wastes of low forest and 

 scrubby bush, and will probably think it a terribly 

 monotonous and uninteresting country ; but no man 

 will ever again sit by a camp fire near one of the 

 little rivers the railway will cross, eating prime 

 pieces of fat elephant's heart, roasted on a forked 

 stick, nor watch the great white rhinoceroses coming 

 to drink just before dark, nor lie and listen to herd 

 after herd of elephants drinking and bathing in the 

 river near their camp. On one particular night in 

 1873 which I shall never forget, the splashing and 

 trumpeting of troop after troop of hot and thirsty 

 elephants was kept up from soon after dark till long 

 past midnight. This was at the little river Sikumi, 

 which the traveller of to-day will cross by an iron 

 bridge. There was no monotony about the country 

 between Bulawayo and the Victoria Falls in those 

 days. The abundance of big game — elephants, black 

 and white rhinoceroses, giraffes, buffaloes, zebras, 

 and many varieties of antelopes — made it always 

 interesting alike to the hunter and the lover of 

 nature. As I think of my early wanderings through 

 those once well -stocked hunting-grounds in the 

 days when I made my living by shooting elephants, 

 I can recall many interesting experiences, some of 



