NORTH-EASTERN RHODESIA 101 



mountains which strikes right across North- 

 Eastern Rhodesia almost to Lake Tanganyika. 

 By mid- day they had reached a httle valley deep 

 in the heart of the range, where the clear waters 

 of the Nyamadzi tumbled along over many little 

 rapids to join the sluggish Luangwa. Here were 

 leafy trees and lofty hyphcene palms, with nuts 

 clustering below the fan-like fronds. The ele- 

 phants spent many days here enjoying the 

 delicious shade of the trees, the crystal waters 

 of the streams, and feeding on the pungent 

 outer rind of the hyphcene fruits. The subject 

 of this sketch enjoyed his sojourn in the 

 Muchingas immensely until the severe quietude 

 of his life was broken by the enactment of a 

 great tragedy. 



It was mid- day, and he had been sleeping 

 under a clump of euphorbia trees with his mother 

 and a dozen other elephants around him. His 

 slumbers were rudely disturbed by the sharp 

 crack of a rifle, and as the echoes of the shot 

 vibrated through the hills he saw a great bull 

 elephant stagger and fall only a yard or two 

 away from him. Then he heard his mother 

 give a scream of rage and charge madly forward. 

 He crashed after her, and as he did so he caught 

 a whiff of evil-smelling air, a scent which always 

 afterwards warned him of the presence of some 

 awful danger, just as that short, sharp sound 

 always made him fearful and angry. Suddenly 

 there was another crack and down fell his 

 mother. She tore up the ground with her one 

 long tusk, and then he saw her curl her trunk 

 around some curious object, the like of which 

 he had never before gazed on. With a soul- 

 rending scream of rage she half raised herself 

 from the ground, wet with blood from her trunk. 



