CH. x UPS AND DOWNS IN THE MBWEHU BUSH ioi 
rainy season by a couple of Europeans, one of 
whom during the same season met an untimely end 
at the hands of an elephant. Hence, they were an 
extremely wary trio, timid and ever on the alert, 
apparently, only feeding at night and early morning, 
and during the day keeping incessantly on the move 
in the wake of the wind. They gave us ample 
proof of their shyness and cunning, for all that day 
we pursued them steadily, and when night closed in 
with the abruptness characteristic of the tropics, 
they were still going strong, leaving us to camp, 
worn out with fatigue and unable to quench our 
thirst for lack of water. Next morning, we set out 
at daybreak, and at 8 o’clock reached Limbo water- 
hole where we decided to rest, hoping that the 
elephants we had so vainly pursued would come 
there to slake their thirst when darkness set in, and 
resolved, should they disappoint us in this expecta¬ 
tion, to set out on the morrow in quest of them. 
This is, by the way, a heart-breaking country in 
which to hunt. Stretches of twenty and thirty 
miles intervene between the different water-holes ; 
there are neither hills nor depressions to relieve the 
eye or vary the monotony of marching—simply a 
flat, sullen, expanse of sand, covered with occasional 
patches of long grass, interspersed with pitiless, 
thorny scrub which cruelly lacerates any exposed 
portion of the body or limbs. Tramping through 
