262 ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



upon the stones. Hair and torn fragments of karosses 

 lay scattered around. 



On the 12th I had another hard day in the mount- 

 ains after elephants, and at night I watched a fountain 

 and shot an old lioness. She came and drank within 

 ten yards of me ; the ball entered the center of her 

 breast, and rested in the skin in the middle of her back. 



On the 13th I dispatched men to camp with the skin 

 of the lioness, and held south for Charcbe, M'hich I found 

 still deserted by the elephants. In the evening the na- 

 tives were all busy cooking the flesh of the lioness, 

 which was excessively fat, and esteemed by them a par- 

 ticular delicacy. 



On the 25th of July, at sunrise, we inspanned and 

 held down the river, leaving three more of my stud be- 

 hind me, two dead and the other dying of tsetse. At 

 sundown we halted about twenty miles down the river. 

 While on our march next morning we came across the 

 fresh spoor of a troop of bull elephants, when I imme- 

 diately outspanned. I was proceeding to follow up the 

 elephants' spoor, when I was met by a party of Bak- 

 alahari, who informed me that other elephants had 

 drunk on the opposite side, and some miles higher up 

 the river, during the night. I resolved to go there in 

 quest of them. "We crossed the Limpopo at a most 

 rocky drift, where the horses were in danger of break- 

 ing their legs, and, holding up the river, took up the 

 spoor of three old bulls. Having followed it for five 

 miles, we at length got into a country so densely cov- 

 ered with locusts that the spoor was no longer visible. 

 A large herd of elephants had, during several previous 

 nights, however, been there feasting upon these in- 

 sects. After a little while we made a cast in advance, 

 and again discovered the spoor of the three bulls, and 



