Cave at Dimbooldend. 191 



weather mosquitoes, and, what are still more disgust- 

 ing, " leeches," which swarm in the grass and upon the 

 leaves of the jungle. These creatures insinuate them- 

 selves through all the openings in a person's dress — up 

 the browsers, under the waistcoat, down the neck, up 

 the wrists and in fact everywhere, drawing blood with 

 insatiable voracity, and leaving an unpleasant irritation 

 for some days after. 



All these annoyances form great drawbacks to the 

 enjoyment of the low-country sports ; although they 

 are afterward forgotten, and the bright moments of 

 the sport are all that are looked back to, they are great 

 discomforts at the time. When the day is over, and 

 the man, fatigued by intense heat and a hard day's 

 work, feels himself refreshed by a bath and a change 

 of clothes, the incurable itching of a thousand tick-bites 

 destroys all his pleasure : he finds himself streaming 

 with blood from leech-bites, and for the time he feels 

 disgusted with the country. First-rate sport can alone 

 compensate for all these annoyances. 



There is a portion of the Park country known as 

 Dimbooldene. In this part there is a cave formed by 

 a large overhanging rock, which is a much cooler resi- 

 dence than the tent. Here we accordingly bivouacked, 

 the cave being sufficiently large to contain the horses 

 in addition to ourselves and servants. After a delight- 

 fully cool night free from mosquitoes we made a day of 

 it, but we walked from sunrise till five p.m. without 

 seeing a sign of an elephant. At length, from the top 

 of a high hill on the very confines of the Park country, 

 we looked across a deep valley, and with the assistance 

 of the telescope we plainly distinguished a large single 

 elephant feeding on the grassy side of an opposite moun- 



