SPORt ON THE RUKUSI StREAM. ^7 



drink water. Tea has the advantage that the water has to be boiled, which kills 

 any noxious germs that may be in it. Cocoa, although refreshing, gives one a 

 thirst, and I do not think it can compare with tea, or even coffee, as a drink for 

 the hunter. 



On the 6th I shot an old bushbuck ram, having been unable to find the spoor 

 of a bull elephant. I got into camp very lame with my foot still painful. Every day 

 I soaked it in a solution of corrosive sublimate or permanganate, and I hoped to cure 

 it in time. A few days' rest would probably have healed it ; but the longer one 

 stays out the more do expenses increase. The day following I had to stay 

 in camp to give my foot a rest, which annoyed me, for the weather had turned 

 a little cooler. On this day I had a letter from a friend, Mr. L. S. Norman, 

 who was hunting thirty miles off. Next day I went out, notwithstanding I was 

 very lame. We got on the spoor of a bull that had drunk in the Rukusi during 

 the night. At 1 1 a.m., as we were following it along one of the well-worn elephant 

 paths that abound here, we heard an elephant call in the bush to the left. Leaving 

 all the men except two, I went to see what they were like. 



The elephant, or perhaps more, kept calling, and we went towards the sound 

 and soon saw them all grouped together under the shade of some big trees. 

 Below the wind, and between the elephants and myself, was a patch of tall 

 unburnt grass, in a continuance of which the elephants were standing. Edging 

 round, I managed to get a good view of most of them, and I could not see a 

 single bull among the lot. In the meantime the wind began to veer round a 

 point or two. 



Suddenly the elephants began to move quietly off, led by an old cow. They 

 had evidently got suspicious, and may have got the wind of the men I had 

 left behind. 



It did not matter much, for there was not a bull among them, which I made 

 certain of as they passed me. It now being extremely hot, I went back to the 

 men and made some tea from water I always carry in calabashes, and gave 

 the men a drink of water. 



Taking the bull's spoor again I went on, the men grumbling and saying the 

 sun would kill them. I thought if I could walk with a lame foot that they 

 could follow, so after calling them " old women " they stopped grousing. I suppose 

 we had been going about an hour when one of the men behind ran up and said 

 he saw an elephant to the right. 



Looking in the direction he pointed, I saw the animal, so went up close, and 

 was extremely disappointed to find it was a tuskless bull wandering about by 



