328 
THE NEW AFRICA 
sibility of our meeting elephants on the road out to Mongwato, 
and with this meagre comfort I had to content myself. 
Next morning we took the tracks of seven giraffes that had 
been drinking overnight three miles further down the river, and, 
as if to compensate us for yesterday’s fiasco, we came up to them 
at eight o’clock, still in the cool of morning. With a three hun¬ 
dred yards’ start they were off with us at their heels, going at an 
easy canter to induce them to moderate their pace, until a 
favourable opportunity should offer us a piece of open country, 
where we could gallop up within easy range before they were 
aware of our intention and could increase their speed. They led 
us a nice dance over the sand-belts, and through thorny laagtes 
that required some art and considerable pluck to negotiate, as it 
is while hidden under those mimosa trees one hopes unobserved 
to lessen the distance a little. Stremboom in his excitement 
charged through one of these thorny thickets about four hundred 
yards wide, on his skittish little Basuto mare, hoping to take a 
‘ bulge out of our sails ’ by being a lighter weight, for which he 
paid the full penalty, as he left nearly all his shirt suspended in 
fragments on the thorns, and his moleskin trousers were hanging 
in strips when he emerged on the other side about a hundred 
yards ahead of us. We also in a measure paid penalty for the 
venture by sustaining many.scratches and tears in the passage. 
My height and size considerably inconvenienced me in the 
bushes, for, trying to dodge beneath a small thorny branch that 
Witboy had safely got under before me, by lying flat on his 
back along the horse’s crupper, I received the full swing of the 
released branch in the throat and face, and enjoyed a beautiful 
scrape while passing underneath, a sensation that reminded me 
particularly of nothing I had ever experienced before. However, 
ahead we went, following the giraffes, who were swinging un¬ 
concernedly along, with their tails twisting and turning in the 
most lively manner, completely deceived by our tactics into 
the belief that they had the legs of us. Stremboom’s rush was 
ill-timed, for ahead of us again was another thorny bush, into 
which the giraffes calmly swung themselves with their long, 
