XIV 
RETURN TO LAKE RUDOLPH 
319 
ginning by copying in my rough notes for the intervening days.” 
And the entry for nth January is headed by this note:— 
“ This account was written two days after the event. I need 
hardly point out that if it is not very lucid, a consideration of 
the circumstances under which it was written may cause its 
weak points to be pardoned.” Nevertheless, though the word¬ 
ing is terse and abrupt, the description of the details of that 
disastrous hunt is sufficiently clear to bring vividly back to me 
the memory of every incident and of some particulars even 
which I had forgotten. With its help I will endeavour to give 
an intelligible account of what happened. 
We were off betimes, then, on the morning of this eventful 
day. Striking straight across the open, we made a tangent to 
the farther edge of the bay and soon entered the thick bush 
which, from a little beyond it, stretched over the whole country 
along the shores, and even into the lake itself, right away to the 
river, and back towards the path we had come by the day before 
from Murli. Our friends took us first to an isolated patch of 
cultivation on the border of the swamp in which the lake here 
terminates. The owners, a mart and one or two women who 
belonged to the district of Murthu beyond, were standing on 
high platforms constructed on lopped trees so as to command 
a view over their little field of millet—nourished into luxuriance 
by the damp alluvial soil. The sun had but lately risen, and 
the mosquitoes were still unpleasantly active, though the natives 
seemed not to notice them, their attention being taken up by the 
birds, flitting hungrily about the little clearing, at which they 
shouted and slung stones. Their task was one of unremitting 
care ; for they were compelled to sleep on their elevated look¬ 
outs in order to endeavour by shouting to scare the elephants 
from their crops. These latter were apparently not much in 
dread of the guards or of their noise, for we learnt that they 
had been heard close by that morning, and were even now 
probably not far off. 
Entering again the encircling forest, we proceeded along 
