Sept. 3, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
369 
boy to camp as quickly as possible, but he was 
not seriously hurt. My carbolic was efficacious 
and the day after we pulled up stakes. 
When, a few days later, we struck a big village, 
our arrival was made the occasion of a glor¬ 
ious drunk by the natives. Kaffir beer is most 
insidious. It is made with fermented Kaffir corn 
and tastes not unlike sour milk, but in hot 
weather is a very great thirst quencher and goes 
down like water. In a very short time, however, 
one begins to feel the effects of his potations. 
From previous experience I refrained from 
drinking it, and all my time w'as occupied in 
keeping order, and at last I gave that up too. It 
w'as just getting daylight when I turned out next 
morning. There was no coffee, nothing was 
ready. After waiting perhaps an hour Eli ar¬ 
rived, looking very ill. He told me that they 
had a great dance the previous night and that 
he was the “belle” of the ball. This I quite be¬ 
lieved by the number of dusky maidens I saw 
watching for him. I made up my mind at once 
that this was no place for the boys and told Eli 
that we would march, directly he could get 
the boys or some of them together. For the first 
time since I had known him Eli was sulky and 
inclined tp be stubborn, and I told him at once 
that if he preferred staying where he was, he 
could do so, but that I would get Overcoat to 
take his place; Overcoat, I may add, had never 
once appeared since w'e reached the village. 
In about half an hour Eli arrived with the 
majority of my porters and I had my tent pulled 
down and packed and told them to march. Then 
\ questioned Eli as to what he wanted. He re¬ 
plied rather foolishly that he had been married 
the night before and asked if he could take his 
woman along. Of course I assented and a rather 
nice looking girl who could not have been more 
than fifteen years old, but was built like the 
mast of a ship, joined our caravan. I made in¬ 
quiries about Overcoat, whom I had practically 
paid up on our arrival, but of him I could learn 
nothing. He never rejoined me, as I rather 
hoped he would, and I daresay when I journey 
back there some time in the future I shall find 
him a big chief, but—I am quite sure—wearing 
his overcoat or what remains of it, and always 
ready to welcome the white man. I had a greaf 
regard for Overcoat. I had promised Eli that 
on my arrival at Beira I would send him back 
to any place he wanted to go. At the first op¬ 
portunity I asked him what he intended doing 
with Mrs. Eli. To this he answered that she 
would also go with him, that she was a good 
girl and the more wives he had the better off 
he was. At our first camp a few more of my 
old porters straggled in. but at least five did not, 
and never turned up. 
For two days we traveled very slowly. I 
missed Overcoat because he knew the country, 
and if it had not been for Eli 1 .should have been 
absolutely at sea. Mrs. Eli, after her first shy¬ 
ness had passed off, was ready most pleasing 
and entertaining. The country we were now 
passing through was hilly, but with plenty of 
small timber, and throughout the whole latter 
part of the trip well watered and literally cut 
up with elephant spoor. I had still one bull 
coming to me in Northeastern Rhodesia and so 
I determined to lose lio time, but to get after 
the first decent bull I had a chance at. The next 
day I had it and got one of the largest I have 
seen, though not a monster. 
Long before getting into camp that night we 
had run across spoor, some fresh and some old, 
but just before pitching our tents we had come 
to a place where a large herd had been the day 
before. I told Eli that if he could leave Mrs. 
Eli with safety we would start out at the break 
of day and see what we could do. I had already 
concluded that Mrs. Eli knew her way about, 
and I often wondered whether she had not been 
to Johannesburg and learnt a thing or two worth 
knowing. We got up to the herd, which num¬ 
bered nine, with the greatest dase, and I downed 
my bull at the first shot, catching him right in 
the brain. This was, therefore, my second ele¬ 
phant and my limit in Rhodesia, and for the re¬ 
mainder of the trip, although we came across 
some very large herds, I had to refrain. It is 
very hard to let a good bull pass by. Usually 
he is—or you think he is—bigger than any you 
have, but it has to be done, and the best thing 
is not to look for them. 
Mjirs. Eli proved quite an acquisition to the 
kitchen department, although of course our cook¬ 
ing was extremely limited. One day on the 
march is very much like another unless some¬ 
thing happens out of the common. At one place 
we were told there was a white rhino wander¬ 
ing about, but the bush was extremely thick and 
quite impassable, except by going on the game 
paths or getting down on all fours and creep¬ 
ing, and I did not care for this. I stayed there 
two days, but saw nothing of the white rhino, 
nor came across any spoor that was fresh. 
There were some tracks, but they looked as if 
they had been made a year. In this bush there 
was a good herd of buffalo which I heard, but 
did not see. As it was an impossible place to 
shoot, I packed up and moved on. 
One night a lion came into camp and gave 
the boys a good scare, for which I was glad, as 
they were getting extremely slack about keeping 
up a fire. The visit had the desired effect, and 
a good fire was kept going for some time after 
this. The following morning I went out to look 
for the lion and followed up his trail, but it led 
directly into a patch of long grass and bush. 
The boys would not go in to beat it out and it 
was too green to burn. I set a trap for him that 
night and although the gun went off in the mid¬ 
dle of the night, next morning there was no 
lion. It must have been some small animal that 
fired it. By his spoor he was a whopper. 
Flere I saw the first lot of wild dogs that I 
met during my whole trip. There were seven 
of them, and when I came across them, they 
were not hunting, but just moving along. 
They took good care not to let me come too 
close and I chanced a long shot at the largest, 
which hit, but I do not think wounded him seri¬ 
ously. At any rate he went off with the rest. 
The wild dogs are savage looking animals- and 
are said, when hungry, to tackle human beings. 
They look quite able to do so, and I am afraid 
of them. Of course they ravage all kinds'of 
game, even pulling down a buffalo when put 
to it. 
One day I was marching in advance with Eli 
as usual when we heard a most awful row going 
on. a fight of some kind. For a few moments 
I could not think what it was, until Eli said. 
“Baboons fighting.” We approached as carefully 
as we could and there were two old dog baboons 
surrounded by their admiring wives, having a 
really good fight. Our presence discovered, off 
the whole bunch scampered, shrieking and ges¬ 
ticulating, but not before I had time to get a 
bead on one of the combatants, which I killed. 
The rest of the bunch did not go far, and for 
a time I thought they were half inclined to come 
back and avenge their comrade, so I fired a 
couple more shots, which had the desired effect, 
and they retired. This baboon was an enormous 
animal, with great yellow tusks. He was badly 
cut up, and I supposed had I left them alone 
one of them would have been killed. It looked 
like a fight to a finish. 
Our only way now to secure guides was to 
hire a boy from a village who would take us to 
another village. This was a very unsatisfactory 
way, but I was powerless to improve on it. Here 
the natives had some nice cattle in-spite of the 
fact that there are a good many tsetse fly, but as 
I have before written, these insects keep to defi¬ 
nite belts and so can be avoided. I noticed that 
the kraals were very high and strongly built. 
All around the villages there was a stockade, 
too high for a lion to get over, and at night the 
opening was carefully closed. They send their 
cattle out to graze, probably in charge of only 
a few small urchins, and it is not often that the 
herds are molested in the day time. It is on 
dark and rainy nights that the lions make an 
attack. We were getting to, or rather were now- 
in. Nyassaland. Practically the whole of this 
province is extremely fertile and they grow 
some excellent tobacco there. I have smoked a 
lot of it and found it good. It is extremely 
strong, however. Lions were very plentiful here, 
as we were yet to find out. In Blantyre one can 
buy a good skin, head and claws complete, for a 
couple of pounds. 
A few days after an unhappy occurrence took 
place. We were camped about 200 yards from 
a fair-sized river and I had been fishing with 
great succes§. I always take great care when 
sitting on the bank of a stream to get on as high 
a piece of ground as possible and always to have 
a rifle or pistol handy on account of crocodiles. 
As the water there was deep in some places, I 
warned the boys to be very careful where they 
bathed and washed their clothes. I had gone up 
to my tent and was lying on the bed having a 
siesta when I heard a great shouting down at 
the river. Jumping up and seizing my rifle I 
ran down to see what was the matter, but was 
of course too late, though a few of the boys 
were still in the water scrambling as fast as 
they could to the shore. A crocodile had come 
up and taken one of them and we never saw a 
vestige of him again. 
In this river there were also a few hippos. We 
heard them bellowing and splashing about at 
night and found that they frequented a large 
pool some little distance from where we were 
camped. I did not wish to shoot them, as we 
had plenty of meat, and they are of no earthly 
use, excepting that the hide makes good sjam¬ 
boks, though a rhino makes a very much better 
one, and when you shoot him he gets what he 
deserves, but a hippo, unless you wound or an¬ 
no}' him, is harmless enough. The natives, how¬ 
ever, are very fond of the flesh of a y-oung 
hippo, and it is not much unlike pork. 
About this time I kept missing small things 
out of my tent, nothing of any value, but still 
petty thieving, and I spoke to Eli about it. The 
sugar—and I only had a very small quantity left 
—was going very much faster than it should 
