country is now so hunted by natives, that the elephants 

 have been driven to coverts so far away from the river 

 that our only chance of finding them by day would be to 

 spend two days in tracking them. Coke, when bathing 

 to-day, put his foot on a small crocodile, but failed ta 

 catch it ; otherwise he might have been brought home 

 and allowed to disport himself in the Serpentine, as a 

 little pleasant excitement for morning bathers. Return- 

 ing to camp this evening, all the cut brushwood that 

 surrounds it as a protection from wild beasts seemed 

 to have burst into leaf in our absence ; but on closer 

 inspection the leaves turned out to be long strips of' 

 elephant's flesh with which the Arabs had covered the 

 branches, to dry them in the sun, and they were still 

 busily at work hammering out the cut strips with a piece 

 of wood, over the elephant's thigh-bones or on smooth 

 stones. Mohamed the cook, and others of our more 

 personal staff, have lost no time in taking advantage of 

 the arrival of the civet cat, 'and have so smeared them- 

 selves over with the secretion from its musk-gland that 

 they have given us good cause to groan over the intro- 

 duction of so potent an animal into our otherwise 

 contented family. 



