CH. x UPS AND DOWNS IN THE MBWEHU BUSH 101 



rainy season by a couple of Europeans, one of 

 whom during the same season met an untimely end 

 at the hands of an elephant. Hence, they were an 

 extremely wary trio, timid and ever on the alert, 

 apparently, only feeding at night and early morning, 

 and during the day keeping incessantly on the move 

 in the wake of the wind. They gave us ample 

 proof of their shyness and cunning, for all that day 

 we pursued them steadily, and when night closed in 

 with the abruptness characteristic of the tropics, 

 they were still going strong, leaving us to camp, 

 worn out with fatigue and unable to quench our 

 thirst for lack of water. Next morning, we set but 

 at daybreak, and at 8 o'clock reached Limbo water- 

 hole where we decided to rest, hoping that the 

 elephants we had so vainly pursued would come 

 there to slake their thirst when darkness set in, and 

 resolved, should they disappoint us in this expecta- 

 tion, to set out on the morrow in quest of them. 



This is, by the way, a heart-breaking country in 

 which to hunt. Stretches of twenty and thirty 

 miles intervene between the different water-holes ; 

 there are neither hills nor depressions to relieve the 

 eye or vary the monotony of marching simply a 

 flat, sullen, expanse of sand, covered with occasional 

 patches of long grass, interspersed with pitiless, 

 thorny scrub which cruelly lacerates any exposed 

 portion of the body or limbs. Tramping through 



