MR. GORDON CUMMINGS. 91 



and seamed with fearful wounds ; to which ordeal they must add 

 the exploit of killing an hippopotamus before they are called 

 men and permitted to marry a wife. There may be a worthy 

 lesson in this for more enlightened people ; for truly there can 

 hardly be fitness for the responsibilities of life before one is in 

 some way trained to endure, or dares to do. Among these 

 tribes another singular fact is, that no one knows his age, but 

 measures his life only by the initiations into the national rites 

 which he has witnessed. 



The Bamangwato hills, in whose shadow the party passed 

 along, rising nearly a thousand feet above the plain — vast 

 masses of black basalt — are scarred and split and everywhere 

 present the traces of volcanic action. The soil lying in the in- 

 terstices relieves the barrenness of the lava marks with pleasant 

 foliage. All along were seen the chinks and cavities formed 

 by the broken masses, which, slipping down, have caught and 

 hang piled against each other, forming wild refuges for the 

 natives in time of war. 



Twenty miles beyond the Bamangwato the party reached Mr. 

 Cummings' farthest station north. This gentleman outranked, 

 by far, all hunters in Africa, and many a wild and thrilling 

 story is in his book, which has aroused the Nimrod spirit in the 

 breast of youth. But the chase along our meadows and river 

 banks of the bounding buck or cunning fox is a poor prepara- 

 tion for the terrific charge of an infuriated elephant: shrieking 

 like a steam-whistle, his proboscis high in air, his dread-in- 

 spiring tusks gleaming awfully, his enormous tread shaking the 

 earth, he rushes on, trampling under foot every opposing thing ; 

 he must have nerve who stands, and skill who escapes. 



Beyond Letlachi they entered on a plain, where, for sixty 

 miles, there was no water. Feeding here and there were 

 seen vast herds of elands, and frequently they saw the silly 

 ostrich. Hardly any occupant of these wilds engages a deeper 

 interest. Its very folly is entertaining; the traveller pities and 

 laughs, to see the creature, though fully a mile away, in extreme 

 alarm rushing straight toward him. The poor bird seems to 

 suspect that every passer-by is trying to circumvent him, and so 

 invariably seeks safety by rushing across the path, frequently 

 only a few yards or rods before the oxen. With enormous 



