XIV RETURN TO LAKE RUDOLPH 319 



ginning by copying in my rough notes for the intervening days." 

 And the entry for iith January is headed by this note: — 

 " This account was written two days after the event. I need 

 hardly point out that if it is not very lucid, a consideration of 

 the circumstances under which it was written may cause its 

 weak points to be pardoned." Nevertheless, though the word- 

 ing is terse and abrupt, the description of the details of that 

 disastrous hunt is sufficiently clear to bring vividly back to me 

 the memory of every incident and of some particulars even 

 which I had forgotten. With its help I will endeavour to give 

 an intelligible account of what happened. 



We were off betimes, then, on the morning of this eventful 

 day. Striking straight across the open, we made a tangent to 

 the farther edge of the bay and soon entered the thick bush 

 which, from a little bej'ond it, stretched over the whole country 

 along the shores, and even into the lake itself, right away to the 

 river, and back towards the path we had come by the day before 

 from Murli. Our friends took us first to an isolated patch of 

 cultivation on the border of the swamp in which the lake here 

 terminates. The owners, a man and one or two women who 

 belonged to the district of Murthu beyond, were standing on 

 high platforms constructed on lopped trees so as to command 

 a view over their little field of millet — nourished into luxuriance 

 by the damp alluvial soil. The sun had but lately risen, and 

 the mosquitoes were still unpleasantl)' active, though the natives 

 seemed not to notice them, their attention being taken up by the 

 birds, flitting hungrily about the little clearing, at which they 

 shouted and slung stones. Their task was one of unremitting 

 care ; for they were compelled to sleep on their elevated look- 

 outs in order to endeavour by shouting to scare the elephants 

 from their crops. These latter were apparently not much in 

 dread of the guards or of their noise, for we learnt that they 

 had been heard close by that morning, and were even now 

 probably not far off 



Entering again the encircling forest, we proceeded along 



