RESULTS OF THE HUNT. 845 



Attention to the flesh, which they next reduce to liltongue, cutting 

 every morsel into thin strips from six to twenty feet in length. 

 These strips are of the breadth and thickness of a man's two 

 fingers. When all is reduced to biltongue, they sally forth with 

 their tomahawks, and cut down a number of poles of two sorts, foi 

 uprights and cross-poles. The uprights are eight feet long, and 

 forked at one end. They place them upright in the ground 

 around their respective trees, laying the cross-poles resting on the 

 forks, and these are adorned with endless garlands of the raw 

 meat, which is permitted to hang in the sun for two or three days, 

 when it will have lost much of its weight, and be stiff and easy to 

 be carried. They then remove the biltongue from the poles, and, 

 folding it together, they form it into bundles, which are strongly 

 lashed and secured with long strips of the tough inner bark of 

 thorny mimosas. Their wcrk in the forest is now completed, and, 

 each man placing one bundle on his head, and slinging several 

 others across his shoulders, returns to his wife and family at head- 

 quarters. 



The appearance which the flesh of a single elephant exhibits 

 when reduced to strips and suspended from the poles is truly sur- 

 prising, the forest far around displaying a succession of ruby 

 festoons, and reminding one of a vineyard laden with its clustering 

 fruits. When the skull of my elephant was ready for the axe 

 Mutchuisho caused a party to hew out for me the tusks a work 

 of great labor, and needing considerable skill. In the present 

 instance the work was clumsily executed, the native hacking arid 

 injuring the ivory in removing the bone with their little toma- 

 hawks. In consequence of this, I invariably afterward performed 

 the task myself, using superior American hatchets, which I had 

 provided expressly for the purpose. When the tusks had been 

 extracted, I saddled up and started for the camp, accompanied by 

 my after-riders and a party of the natives bearing the ivory, with 

 a supply of baked foot and trunk and a portion of the flesh. The 

 natives had appropriated all the rest. On our way to camp we 

 passed through the kraal of the Bakalahari. In the valleys they 

 had Irrge gardens, in which corn and water-melons wer<? g-ou-n 



