HARMONIES. 



ing down the thorny brushwood, and breaking 

 off with his proboscis the larger branches that 

 obstruct the passage; the females and younger 

 males follow in his wake in single file. Other 

 herds are seen scattered over the valley as the 

 prospect opens ; some browsing on the juicy trees, 

 others reposing, and others regaling on the fresh 

 roots of huge mimosas which have been torn up; 

 while one immense monster is amusing himself, as 

 if it were but play to him, with tearing up these 

 great trees for his expectant family. He digs with 

 his stout tusks beneath the roots, now on this 

 side, now on that, now using one tusk, now the 

 other, prizing, and forcing away, and loosening 

 the earth all around, till at length with a tremen- 

 dous pull of his twisted proboscis, he tears up the 

 reluctant tree, and inverting the trunk amidst a 

 shower of earth and stones, exposes the juicy and 

 tender rootlets to his hungry progeny. Well may 

 the traveller say that a herd of elephants brows- 

 ing in majestic tranquillity amidst the wild mag- 

 nificence of an African landscape is a very noble 

 sight, and one, of which he will never forget the 

 impression.* 



Who has ever gazed upon the lion under condi- 

 tions so fitted to augment his terrible majesty, as 

 those in which the mighty hunter of South Africa 

 was accustomed to encounter him? Who of us 

 would have volunteered to be his companion, 

 when night after night he watched in the pit that 

 he had dug beside the Massouey fountain in the 

 remote Bamangwato country? There is the lonely 

 pool, situated in the open valley, silent and de- 

 serted by day, but marked with well-beaten tracks 

 converging to its margins from every direction ; 

 tracks in which the footprints of elephants, rhi- 



* " African Sketches." 

 61 



