LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA 137 



fellows are these noisy ancestors of ours, especially when feed- 

 ing, spread about, picking up what they can find, lifting stones, 

 and seizing anything that may be under them, and popping it 

 into their cheek pouches with a smack. Three or four experi- 

 enced veterans keep guard, to give warning of the approach 

 of danger. They cannot forage for themselves, so they have an 

 eye for the pouches of their brethren, and now and then make 

 a spring, take a young fellow by the ear, and cuff him well, until 

 he allows them to put their fingers into his pouch, and transfer 

 its contents to their own. The hunting leopard, too, was 

 seldom seen. I once roughly tested his tremendous speed. 

 I was on horseback, and caught sight of one in such a posi- 

 tion that he must pass close to me, if I could gain a point fifty 

 yards off. To upset my plan he had a hundred and fifty 

 yards to run, and he beat me hollow, though I went at a full 

 gallop. 



The game was plentiful on this north side of the river, but 

 the country in places was very ugly for hunting from the dense 

 thickets. Lying lazily one day on a high bank of a beautiful 

 reach, I was watching the otters below me as they paddled 

 and fished down stream, when a troop of Bushmen from a 

 neighbouring kraal came to the watering-place, to fill their 

 gourds and ostrich shells, before starting for the elephants I 

 had killed the previous day, which were as usual some twelve 

 or fifteen miles from camp, in a dry and thirsty land where no 

 water was. After filling their vessels with a supply sufficient 

 to last them for the two or three days it would take them to 

 cut up and dry their meat, they proceeded to fill themselves a 

 most remarkable process ; each one, whether at the moment 

 thirsty or not, pouring down a cargo of water to the utmost 

 limit of his holding capacity, to economise the store he carried 

 at his back. Like Mr. Weller at Stiggins' tea party, ' I could see 

 them swelling wisibly before my very eyes,' until their usually 

 shrivelled bodies became shining and distended all over ; and 

 man, woman and child waddled away so many different sized 

 water balloons. The last of the long line had disappeared in 



