Elephants 



a similar specimen in London in good condition, the tusks of 

 this elephant being much weightier than the first. Curiously 

 enough the stomach of this animal contained several handfuls 

 of large water-worn pebbles, some of them over one and a 

 half inches in diameter and weighing together several pounds. 

 As water was scarce in the district, it is to be presumed they 

 were taken up in the beast's trunk in its endeavour to get a 

 decent drink from some partially dried up water-hole. 



To relate yet another adventure : there is in the Luangwa 

 valley, known to sleeping-sickness doctors, journalists and 

 others as the " Death Valley of Africa " by reason of the 

 virulent type of sleeping-sickness carried by the Glossina 

 morsitans or common tsetse fly, a narrow but deep, unnamed 

 stream that some years ago nearly proved my grave, and all 

 but sent me across that other dark water from which there is 

 no return, and over which poor Lewis, the friend and com- 

 panion then with me, had he but known it, was soon to pass. 



In those days, with one drawback and another, we Northern 

 Rhodesian elephant-hunting farmers were often hard put to 

 it to make both ends meet, and in the intervals of losing our 

 cattle with " fly " and our cotton crops with " boll- worm," 

 indulged in the kingly sport of elephant hunting to replenish 

 the famished exchequer : to the death be it said of some of 

 us (although this fact was never taken into consideration 

 by the British South African Company) from sleeping-sickness 

 and others from the prod of an elephant's tusk. I am quite 

 ready to admit we were a considerable source of annoyance 

 to the administration, as we did not always come by our 

 ivory lawfully (on both sides of the border) ; but at the same 

 time some of us " paid the price " which went to even things up. 



On the occasion of which I write, three of us, Lewis, 



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