98 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
munition, and thus render them recalcitrant, and they had 
found out I didn’t and wouldn’t trade; indeed, the story 
among them was that on a native bringing a tusk to my 
waggon for sale I threatened to shoot him then and there ! 
Vardon was the most enthusiastic rhinoceros hunter; he 
filled his waggon with horns asI did mine with ivory ; he used 
to shoot four or five every day, and there was always a fresh- 
ness about the sport to him which seemed remarkable. He 
was an all-round shot, but best at rhinoceros. The mahoho 
is not bad eating—by the way, his hump is excellent—but there 
is a good deal in the cooking of pachydermata. We hada 
capital cook at the waggons, and had eaten elephant’s trunk 
many and many times. Two or three days farther down the 
river the men told me they had heard of a fine herd of bull 
elephants, about thirty miles off; as there was little water, or 
at all events not sufficient for the oxen, they begged me to take 
only a couple of horses and sleep two nights away from the 
waggons. John and I started accordingly with our guides, and 
at 5 P.M. reached the small spring where we were to halt. 
Early next morning news came of two tuskers being close by, 
and it was proposed I should begin with them and go after the 
large herd next day. I soon found and shot them. One, a 
very fine bull with large tusks, charged viciously after getting 
a ball through the thick end of the heart. The men brought 
it tome to look at when they opened him. We took a lump of 
the trunk, and returned to our sleeping place—only one woman 
had remained, the rest were off to the dead elephants, We 
were hungry, and John proposed we should cut part of the 
trunk into small lumps and boil them. On the fire they went, 
and on they were still three hours afterwards. John, who 
was a very hungry fellow, kept prodding the pieces witha 
pointed stick to see if they were fit to eat, but they were still 
springy. At length we voted them done and tried to chew | | 
them, but they were exactly like bits of india-rubber, and we 
could make no impression. The woman, seeing our difficulty, 
made us scrape a hole under the fire, roll the trunk up inits ~ 
