ELEPHANT'S TENACITY OF LIFE. 541 



imagined that I was another Italian, or, as he expressed 

 it, " Siriatomba risen from the dead." In his message 

 to Mburuma he even said that Mobala, and all the 

 villages beyond, were utterly destroyed by our fire-arms, 

 but the sight of Mobala himself, who had come to the 

 village of Selole, led the brother of Mburuma to see at 

 once that it was all a hoax. But for this, the foolish 

 fellow Selole might have given us trouble. 



We saw many of the liberated captives of this Italian 

 among the villages here, and Sekwebu found them to be 

 Matabele. The brother of Mburuma had a gun, which 

 was the first we had seen in coming eastward. Before we 

 reached Mburuma, my men went to attack a troop of 

 elephants, as they were much in need of meat. When 

 the troop began to run, one of them fell into a hole, and 

 before he could extricate himself, an opportunity was 

 afforded for all the men to throw their spears. When he 

 rose he was like a huge porcupine, for each of the seventy 

 or eighty men had discharged more than one spear at him. 

 As they had no more, they sent for me to finish him. In 

 order to put him at once out of pain, I went to within 

 twenty yards, there being a bank between us which he 

 could not readily climb. I rested the gun upon an anthill, 

 so as to take a steady aim ; but though I fired twelve 

 2-ounce bullets, all I had, into different parts, I could 

 not kill him. As it was becoming dark, I advised my 

 men to let him stand, being sure of finding him dead in 

 the morning ; but though we searched all the next day, 

 and went more than ten miles, we never saw him again. 

 I mention this to young men who may think that they 

 will be able to hunt elephants on foot, by adopting the 

 Ceylon practice of killing them by one ball in the brain. 

 I believe that in Africa the practice of standing before 

 an elephant, expecting to kill him with one shot, would 

 be certain death to the hunter; and I would add, for 

 the information of those who may think that, because 

 I met with a great abundance of game here, they also 

 might find rare sport, that the tsetse exists all along both 

 banks of the Zambesi, and there can be no hunting by 

 means of horses. Hunting on foot in this climate is such 

 excessively hard work, that I feel certain the keenest 

 sportsman would very soon turn away from it in disgust. 

 I myself was rather glad, when furnished with the excuse 

 that I had no longer any balls, to hand over all the hunting 



