Trees Broken by Elephants. 149 



them alone. Strange to say I saw this herd within 300 yards 

 of the place where a white elephant hunter had been killed 

 by a cow elephant the previous year. The natives told me 

 that this cow was still with the herd, and when I saw the 

 elephants and pointed to them, the villagers I had with me 

 did not wait, but cleared off as if the devil was after them. 



Not far from here I got a photograph of a very large tree 

 broken by a bull elephant, and it measured just under the 

 place it was broken 52jin. in circumference. As far as I 

 can remember it was an " nkuyu " tree, which is soft and 

 stringy in the wood. Anyhow, it was an example of what 

 a big bull elephant is capable of in the way of muscular 

 strength. 



The district under the Cholo range is flat, and game is 

 most abundant, comprising many eland, buffalo, waterbuck, 

 zebra, hartebeest, and reedbuck. Elephants are often 

 found, and I saw the fresh spoor of a bull rhino one 

 morning. 



Close to the Shire River, that rare and lovely antelope, 

 the inyala, exists, and in the Cholo hills sable antelopes 

 are fairly plentiful. Bushbuck, too, are numerous all over 

 the place, and some of them have good heads. I shot a 

 reedbuck one day, the best I saw out of quite fifty of these 

 animals, which are found in lots of from a couple to five or 

 six animals, and it had a very pretty pair of wide-set 

 horns measuring lyfin. from tip to tip, and I4in. along 

 the curve. 



It is possible to reach Chiromo in about four days from 

 Chinde on the coast, and as there are plenty of boys 

 looking for work during the dry season, which is the best 

 shooting time, a sportsman who is in a hurry could not find 

 anywhere in Africa a finer shooting ground. The heat is 

 very great during the months before the rains, and if a man 

 does not relish a tropical climate he had better not go 

 there ; but on the other hand if he wants good buffalo, 

 eland, waterbuck, and bushbuck heads he is almost certain 

 to get them there. Moreover, he has a very good chance, 

 if he is 'a lucky man, of coming on lions, although during 



