everybody, guns were fired in every direction, often without an aim at all, and in the general pell-mell it was no great wonder that only five elephants should be killed altogether. Cowley and Dorehill affirmed that they had been obliged to throw themselves on the ground to escape the random volley of shot; and they declared, moreover, that the beaters had utterly failed in their work, which would have been done far more effectually by a couple of Masarwas than by the whole host of them. The king had given vent to his anger at the bungling in his usual fashion by thrashing every one within reach with a heavy stick till his arm ached. Before starting, he had been smeared with a variety of ointments which he called a “molemo” to give him influence over the elephants.
Wishing to make rather a longer excursion into the Sesheke woods than I had previously done, I started off before sunrise, and having passed the site of Old Sesheke, turned to the west. On my left lay the Zambesi valley, an apparently boundless plain overgrown with trees and clumps of reeds, and intersected in various places by side-arms of the river, some of them several miles in length. The woods to which I was bending my way were about twenty feet above the level of the water. Some of the lagoons extended right up to the trees, stretching along the edge of the forest for miles, though the river itself was at an average distance of three miles away. Near one of the lagoons I saw a couple of darters, and very singular their appearance was as they perched upon a bare projecting bough, their stumpy bodies and short legs being quite out of proportion to their long, thin necks, that never
