Lake Victoria to Khartoum 



four hundred yards away from the river to try 

 and circumvent the myriads of mosquitoes that 

 would start singing on the river bank at sunset. 

 Messages were sent to the local chief making 

 arrangements for the purchase of food, and re- 

 questing him to come in and see me ; and break- 

 fast was got under weigh. In an hour or so 

 some natives arrived with the news that a herd 

 of about fifty elephants were somewhere about, 

 and parties were despatched north and east to 

 find their tracks. At the end of a terrific down- 

 pour, that lasted till about three o'clock in the 

 afternoon, some of my porters rushed in with the 

 news that they had been held up by a mob of 

 elephants just on the other side of the Waiga, 

 in the Reserve. Out we went, armed to the 

 teeth, and in the silence after the storm we could 

 clearly distinguish at intervals the trumpeting 

 and crashing of elephants as they fed in the 

 jungle. We wandered along by the river all that 

 afternoon, slowly keeping parallel to the ele- 

 phants' line of march, hoping against hope that 

 the notion of crossino- the Waicra in our direction 

 would enter their heads. I must own I was 

 sorely tempted to cross and have a dig at them, 

 and my men begged me to allow them to go and 

 try to drive them over. But this I could not 

 allow, as if I had sent them I should have to have 

 given them a rifle for protection's sake, and then 

 it might have been used — rightly or wrongly ; so, 



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