ctricity. One day,
however, the electric wires caused a fire which destroyed the entire
'town' with astonishing rapidity.

The bridge was opened in August, 1905, on the occasion of the visit of
the British Association. The roadway over it is thirty feet wide,
affording room for a double set of rails, and the panting trains have
already begun to cross its web-like span, gliding into sight from the
cliff-top on one side, only to disappear the next moment on the other in
a green wilderness of ferns and tropic flowers.

[Illustration: "A native lay at the foot of a tree."]

ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE.

By HAROLD ERICSON.

IV.--A FIGHT WITH A RHINOCEROS.

It was now Vandeleur's turn to tell his camp-fire story, and he looked
so long and so dreamily into the embers before he began that Denison
laughed and said, 'Don't go to sleep, old chap, before you begin!'

Vandeleur laughed also, good-naturedly.

* * * * *

I'm not a bit sleepy (he said) but when I think of Umkopo, one of the
best and most faithful friends I ever possessed, it makes me thoughtful.
Umkopo, as the name suggests, had something to do with the Zulus or
Matabeles. His was an extraordinary career, and I may have more to tell
you about him in another yarn; but for the present I will merely tell
you this, that, though he looked scarcely more like a 'nigger' than any
of us three, yet, as a matter of fact, I never for some time really
doubted that he was a young Matabele, simply because it never occurred
to me to doubt it under the circumstances. He was a boy of about
seventeen when I first met him--a straight, well-made chap of about
Bobby's size and weight, black-haired and dark-skinned, but not so dark
as the ordinary run of Mashonaland natives, about as dark, let us say,
as you and I are at the end of a shooting trip somewhere in the
equatorial regions.

Well, I was off some years ago upon a rhinoceros-hunting trip and at the
moment in actual pursuit of a huge beast of greyish tint, a rare colour;
this was an animal who had given me the slip many times, and I was most
anxious to secure him. I was encamped somewhere within the district
which he had chosen as his home, but for a week or two I had not been
able to hit upon his tracks.

Now this was during the time of the first Matabele war, and I was, as a
matter of fact, within the war-zone. I joined in the fighting a month or
two later, finding that men were wanted on