270 
AFRICAN HUNTING. 
wretch had killed and eaten it, and the enraged 
owner flogged and maltreated the boy within an ace 
of taking his life, as Lechulatebe had done to another 
boy a little while before. The other little fellow, 
Leche, is as fat as a porpoise, oily and shining, and 
very like a young sea-cow calf. I never saw a pig 
lay on fat so quick; but he does nothing but eat, 
drink, and sleep, and can hardly waddle. If you lay 
him on his back, he is like a cast sheep, and cannot 
help himself. He would have drowned yesterday in 
a foot and a half of water if we had not rescued him. 
To-day is the third day we have been without flesh 
meat of any kind or sort; the game is entirely ex¬ 
terminated, guns, pit-falls, and poisoned arrows have 
done their work, and last year’s drought and famine 
had left the natives nothing to live on but the spoils 
of the chase. The pit-falls which they make are 
about eight feet deep with a bank in the middle, so 
that whatever game falls into one of them falls 
across the bank, and cannot touch the ground on 
either side. 
The river is very full, and still rising rapidly, over¬ 
spreading its banks far and wide, and driving us 
back to cut a path through the bush, which is so 
thick that our tent is smashed, and two strong canvas 
sails are torn into shreds. The lynch-pins, from con¬ 
stant contact with trees and stumps, are knocked into 
all shapes, and it is a work of time and smiting with 
axe and hammer to take the wheels off to smear. 
And yet not a drop of rain has fallen for months, 
