CHAPTER VII 



East Africa, Beira, Chimoio Fire at Lloyd's Store Umtali 

 A Saddle-ox Salisbury Marandella's Locusts Eland 

 and Sable Antelope The Honey-bird Lion-bait. 



I know how time will ravage, 



How time will level, and yet 

 I long with a longing savage, 



I regret with a fierce regret. 



ADAM LINDSAY GORDON. 



THE journey to Chimoio is very inter- 

 esting. The train went slowly, never 

 more than fifteen miles an hour, 

 puffing and panting up the inclines. From 

 the forty-mile peg the way was all against 

 collar, and at one steep place the air swarmed 

 with a flight of locusts. Millions of them, on the 

 railway lines, everywhere. I am not Ananias 

 enough to suggest that they stopped the train 

 by weight of numbers, but it is a fact that the 

 engine wheels squashed so many of the insects 

 that the wheels could not get a grip on the metals, 

 and the guard brought sand from a barrel and 

 laid it on the metals both sides, which device 

 enabled us to proceed. At Chimoio the rail 

 ended, and we had to take to a light waggon 

 drawn by bullocks. The Hottentot driver of this 

 ramshackle concern was frightfully drunk, so 



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