14 ADVENTURES IN SC;raT AFRICA. 



we saw him. Shouting to my pack, I galloped after 

 him; but the day was close and warm, and the dogs 

 had lost their spirit with the sun. My horse being an 

 indifferent one, I soon lost ground, and the beautiful 

 sable antelope, gaining a rocky ridge, was very soon 

 beyond my reach, and vanished forever from my view. 

 I then rode on for the carcass of the elephant, where I 

 took up my quarters for the night, but I sought in vain 

 to close my eyelids: the image of the sable antelope 

 was still before me, and I slept little throughout the 

 night. 



On the 31st I held southeast in quest of elephants, 

 with a large party of the natives. Our course lay 

 through an open part of the forest, where I beheld a 

 troop of springboks and two ostriches, the first I had 

 seen for a long time. We held for Towannie, a strong 

 fountain in the gravelly bed of a periodical river: here 

 two herds of cow elephants had drunk on the preced- 

 ing evening, but I declined to follow them ; and pres- 

 ently, at a muddy fountain a little in advance, we took 

 up the spoor of an enormous bull, which had wallowed 

 in the mud, and then plastered the sides of several of 

 the adjacent veteran-looking trees. We followed the 

 spoor through level forest in an easterly direction, when 

 the leading party overran the spoor, and casts were 

 made for its recovery. Presently I detected an excit- 

 ed native beckoning violently a little to my left, and, 

 cantering up to him, he said that he had seen the ele- 

 phant. He led me through the forest a few hundred 

 yards, when, clearing a wait-a-bit, I came full in vidw 

 of the tallest and largest bull elephant I had ever seen. 

 He stood broadside to me, at upward of one hundred 

 yards, and his attention at the moment was occupied 

 with the dogs, which, unaware of his proximity, were 



