86 HUNTING TRIPS IN NORTHERN RHODESIA. 



trod on a dry stick. At the sound the animals woke up and came running in our 

 direction. I think that they had not located the sound properly and were not coming 

 for us. We all did a bolt behind an ant-heap and one of the cows stopped and began 

 walking towards us with her trunk swaying about, feeling for the wind. 



I fired a shot in the air which frightened her. I would have been perfectly 

 justified in firing at her, but gave her one chance of clearing off, and luckily for her 

 she went, or the next bullet would have gone into her head. 



At the sound of the shot I saw some animals break away among the thorns and 

 bamboos, and on asking one of the men what they were, he said buffalo. I was too 

 much engaged keeping my eyes on the cow elephant to pay any attention to them, 

 but I wish I had come on them before I saw the elephants, for buffalo are the most 

 difficult game to get a shot at in this country. We were now some way from the 

 river, and I thought the shot I fired to frighten the cow elephant must have disturbed 

 the herd ; besides, we had finished our water, as one of the men had dropped one 

 of the two gourds I had brought and broken it. As we had finished one gourd before 

 this happened we had none left, and the heat was something terrific. I asked one of 

 the villagers the nearest way to the river and made straight for it. We got there at 

 3 o'clock, so I sat down and made some tea and gave the men a rest. These were so 

 tired that they lay down and were asleep at once. About 4 o'clock, when the sun 

 had begun to lose its power, I woke them up and we started for camp. 



We saw a quantity of game, including several herds of puku and a herd of roan 

 antelope. I fired at a ram puku, but unfortunately only wounded it. We spent an 

 hour trying to find it, but had to give it up. 



While following the elephants in the morning, I saw much game, including zebra, 

 roan, waterbuck, kudu, bushbuck, reedbuck, and warthog. One dambo was a sight 

 with several of the species mentioned, all in view at the same time. 



Hearing from a native that there were elephants again near Kanantu's village, 

 I went back and pitched my tent under the same tree I had camped under before. 

 As we marched along in the afternoon the heat was fearf\il. 



Every now and again a blast of hot air would come along which made me draw 

 the flap of my old felt hat over my eyes. Steevens wrote a chapter in " With 

 Kitchener to Khartoum " about a Sudan thirst. 



It is difficult making comparisons between different kinds of thirsts, but a 

 Rhodesian one is quite enough for anybody, and the only thing to quench it with is 

 tepid water or, preferably, hot tea. 



Needing meat again, I went out on the 14th to try to shoot something. The 

 first game I saw was the herd of roan that had behaved so tamely once before, but 



