The Journal of a Sporting Nomad 



perhaps half a mile, the bird keeping just in 

 front of us, until suddenly I missed it. The boys, 

 too, began to look round. Cooe pointed to 

 a hole in a tree, which numbers of bees were 

 entering and leaving. He took an axe from 

 another of my boys and hit the bole of the tree, 

 which sounded quite hollow. The entrance to 

 the beehive which Cooe then started to cut in 

 and enlarge was but four or five feet from the 

 ground. The bees came out in crowds, stinging 

 him and one of my other boys ; the third, having 

 no use for bees and their stings, cleared out to a 

 respectful distance, where he awaited develop- 

 ments. I remained all the time close to the tree. 

 The bees did not molest me, except in the case 

 of one that settled on my left hand, and I 

 brushed this one off before it had time to sting 

 me. In a short time Cooe had cut a hole suffi- 

 ciently large to permit his pulling out with his 

 hands some lovely combs of virgin honey. 

 He also gathered a lot of combs with the 

 young bees or pupae in it (this is, I believe, 

 termed " bee-bread "). Out of that hole he 

 must have taken at least twenty pounds of 

 honeycomb. I wondered how we were going to 

 get it all back to my camp, but it was done by 

 him in this way. He stripped from off a tree a 

 large semicircular piece of bark, then he hit up 

 the ends with the head of the axe, making an 

 altogether satisfactory dish three feet long by 



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