‘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 
_ waterwas. 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 
