CHAPTER XIV 



HUNTING ON LAKE SOLAI 



CHANCE OR SKILL ? 



The operation of extracting the tusks from the 

 massi-ve rocky cranium of an elephant can be effected 

 in two ways. The more expeditious method is to hew 

 them out with hatchets ; but this necessarily involves 

 some injury to the ivory, one-third of which is embedded 

 in the bone. By allowing three or four days to elapse, 

 decomposition will have loosened the hold and the teeth 

 can then be drawn out. 



Being in no special hurry, we elected to await the 

 latter result, the more readily as we found ourselves in 

 a lovely situation, commanding within reach of our 

 camp both w^oocl and water, mountain, marsh and plain. 

 We decided to spend a week exploring our environment 

 and its wild life. 



This decision caused general joy among our men, 

 who were gorging on elephant-meat. Strangely, they 

 preferred the internals, and had driven a " drift " like 

 a mine-shaft through the ribs, thereby entering bodily 

 into the interior and excavatino- the coveted titbits. 

 We had thought of experimenting on the trunk our- 

 selves, till informed that only after forty-eight hours' 

 cooking would the meat be soft enough to cut with a 

 hatchet. We contented ourselves with the undercut of 

 hartebeest and cutlets from some delicious little stein- 

 bucks and oribi that W had shot on the hill. 



On one of these days I was specially pleased to 

 secure a fine cock ostrich, breaking the thigh at 200 

 yards — thus killing the biggest bird on earth and the 



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