226 ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



turp for which I was to cut him to make him shoot well. 

 This I did in the following manner : opening a large 

 book of natural history, containing prints of all the chief 

 quadrupeds, I placed his forefinger successively on sev- 

 eral of the prints of the commonest of the South Afri 

 can quudrupeds, and as I placed his finger on each, I 

 repeated some absurd sentence and anointed him with 

 turpentine. When this was accomplished I made four 

 cuts on his arm with a lancet, and then, anointing the 

 bleeding wounds with gunpowder and turpentiae, I told 

 him that his gun had power over each of the animals 

 which his finger had touched, provided he held it straight. 

 Matsaca and his retinue seemed highly gratified, and 

 presently took leave and departed: I afterward trekked 

 up the river till sundown. 



On the succeeding day we marched with the dawn, 

 and held iip the river. In the forenoon Beohuanas from 

 Seleka visited me, bearing a tooth of a bull elephantj 

 for which they wanted a gun ; the tooth, however, being 

 small, I would not give them one fot it, although I 

 might have done so at a fair profit. I found the game 

 extremely abundant, counting no less than twenty-iwo 

 rhinoceroses, nine of which were in one herd, feeding 

 on the open plain. The wind was as 'foul as it could 

 blow, and kept continually starting the game. At 

 length, late in the afternoon, I got within shot of four 

 white rhinoceroses. The old bull stood next to me ; 

 so, resting my six-pound rifle on the trunk of a tree 

 which an elephant had overthrown, I took him on the 

 shoulder and smashed his forearm ; he ran for thirty 

 yards, and then rolled over on his back. IJe, however, 

 regained his legs and ran a hundred yards further, 

 when his leg failed him, and, coming up on his spoor, I 

 finished him in a few minutes. The wagons now came 



