312 ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



twenty feet in height, every inch of which was to be 

 dreaded as the hooks upon a " kill«devil." On perceiv- 

 ing the elephants, we halted, and Mutchuisho dispatch- 

 ed two men to windward, in the hope of driving them 

 from the impracticable ground they occupied into the 

 level forest where we stood. The elephants, however, 

 were much too wide awake to leave their strong-hold 

 of wait-a-bit bushes. On getting the wind of the men 

 they tossed their trunks, and, wheeling about, held 

 along the mountain side at a rapid pace, until they 

 reached an impenetrable jungle of thorns, from which 

 all our efforts proved unavailing to dislodge them. 



This jungle densely covered the sides and bottom of 

 a wide semicircular basin or hollow in the mountains; 

 it was throughout so dense that a man on foot could 

 scarcely penetrate it. When the elephants started I 

 rode hard after them, followed by my after-riders, and, 

 not understanding the intentions of the elephants, we 

 followed on through the mazes of the jungle in an ele- 

 phant path until we reached the center of the thicket, 

 when we suddenly found ourselves upon them. The 

 dogs then ran in barking, when a general trumpeting 

 took place, and a charging and crashing in all direc- 

 tions, and, owing to tlie extremely dangerous nature of 

 the ground, I was glad to beat a precipitate retreat. 



Once more all was quiet ; my dogs were jaded w^ith 

 the sun, and would not fight. Fancying that the ele- 

 phants had gone ahead, and fearing to lose them, I again 

 pushed on, holding the foot-path as before, when crash 

 came a second charge of elephants at our very elbows, 

 accompanied by a trumpeting which caused our ears to 

 tingle. They charged upon us from opposite direc- 

 tions, and we were actually in the very middle of them. 

 They were extremely tierce, and, but for the dogs, not 



