MORE ELEPHANTS AND OTHER GAME. 45 



me at Kazembi's village, which is about sixteen miles from Nawalia. I here engaged 

 a man named Chikamagombe, whom I afterwards found to be one of the best native 

 spoorers I have ever seen. Besides being a good spoorer, he was a very plucky man. 

 Next day I was feverish, as tramping along in the fierce heat generally tends to this 

 complaint. However, as I hate sitting in camp when I can manage to walk, I went 

 out and shot three puku, one of them having a very good pair of horns. 



Along the Nyamazi stream there is a quantity of a vile spear grass (matete). 

 The points of this grass, or rather reed, are as sharp as needles, and make their 

 presence painfully felt on bare legs ; and they are also a danger to the eyes. Tsetse 

 flies swarmed here and bit my legs, and also gave the natives a lively time of it. 



A zebra or gnu tail comes in useful for switching off these pests, as their bites are 

 very painful if they touch a nerve. The tsetse does not affect man as it does cattle 

 and other domesticated animals, but it has been proved to be the cause of the spread 

 of sleeping sickness, carrying the germ from one person to another. As long as there 

 is no sleeping sickness about the only harm it does to man is to torture him with 

 its bites. As it is capable of carrying sleeping sickness it can doubtless inoculate 

 human beings with other complaints. 



Having tried hard to get an elephant near Kazembi's village, and being 

 unsuccessful, I had moved on about eight miles to Ndombo's village, where there 

 was a nicely kept resthouse for travellers. On the morning of October 1 2th, I rose 

 an hour before dawn and had left camp behind some distance before the sun rose. 

 Having crossed the Nyamazi stream, we took a line parallel to the water to cut the 

 spoor of any elephants that had drunk there during the night. We saw many well- 

 used elephant paths with fairly recent spoor, but none quite fresh enough to be worth 

 following. At last, after about two hours' walk, we hit off the tracks of a good bull, 

 which we at once followed. Soon we found he had been joined by two others. After 

 a time the spoor took us into a huge unburnt dambo, the grass being twelve feet high 

 in many places. The spoor was easy enough to follow except that the walking 

 was hard owing to a lot of the strong grass having been pressed down across 

 the path. 



We were going along when we came on some hot dung, and I knew I would 

 soon see the animals. A little further on we suddenly saw them in front, standing 

 packed together with their sterns towards us. As far as I could make out, there were 

 two bulls and a cow, the largest bull standing in the middle. As they were facing 

 away from me, I could not see their tusks, so I stood against a small sapling and 

 watched them peacefully sleeping. Their ears kept moving, and, occasionally, their 

 tails, and they swayed gently backwards and forwards. The one on the left must 



