246 
AFRICAN HUNTING. 
not what I want. The elephants are wary, and very 
hard indeed to come at, as they are now so much 
sought for, and every savage knows the value of the 
ivory. I have tried fishing to-day, as I dare not fire 
a shot for fear of frightening the elephants, who 
cannot be far away, but the water was too clear and 
the sun too bright to do any good. 
18 th. — No success as yet with the elephants, 
partly owing to the laziness of the Kaffirs, but partly, 
also, if the truth must be told, to my own impatience, 
obstinacy, and self-will. I hunted them five days 
successively, the Kaffirs, in the first instance, taking 
me to a brack or salt vley, two days out of my 
road, where there was not a sign of an elephant 
having been for the last six months. They did this, 
I have no doubt, under the orders of the Banians- 
watos. I was in a desperate way, and on getting 
back to the wagon I found that the elephants had 
drunk again at the river. This time I did not wait 
for the Kaffirs, but took the spoor myself, and 
eventually lost them in the densest hack-thorns I 
ever saw. It would have been impossible to have 
clone much good with them, even had I found them 
there; the poor horses scarcely had the saddles off 
their backs for the five days. 
I shot a fine specimen of the gemsbok or oryx, 
a cow, one of the kinds I had not yet got, and 
was well pleased; and I also drove a fine old eland 
bull to the wagon, not without great difficulty, as the 
mapani trees were so uncommonly thick that I could 
