nured to
it, were proof against everything. Being all but naked, they did not
suffer from wet garments; and as they smeared their bodies over with
grease, the rain ran off them as it does off the ducks. However, it did
not last long at that time. In a few days the sky cleared, and the
spirits of the party revived with their health.

The amount of animal life seen on the journey was amazing. All
travellers in Africa have borne testimony to the fact that it teems with
animals. The descriptions which, not many years ago, were deemed
fabulous, have been repeated to us as sober truth by men of
unquestionable veracity. Indeed, no description, however vivid, can
convey to those whose personal experience has been limited to the fields
of Britain an adequate conception of the teeming millions of living
creatures, great and small, four-footed and winged, which swarm in the
dense forests and mighty plains of the African wilderness.

Of course the hunters of the party were constantly on the alert, and
great was the slaughter done; but great also was the capacity of the
natives for devouring animal food, so that very little of the sport
could be looked upon in the light of life taken in vain.

Huge and curious, as well as beautiful, were the creatures "bagged."

On one occasion Tom Brown went out with the rest of the party on
horseback after some elephants, the tracks of which had been seen the
day before. In the course of the day Tom was separated from his
companions, but being of an easy-going disposition, and having been born
with a thorough belief in the impossibility of anything very serious
happening to him, he was not much alarmed, and continued to follow what
he thought were the tracks of elephants, expecting every moment to fall
in with, or hear shots from his friends.

During the journey Tom had seen the major, who was an old sportsman,
kill several elephants, so that he conceived himself to be quite able
for that duty if it should devolve upon him. He was walking his horse
quietly along a sort of path that skirted a piece of thicket when he
heard a tremendous crashing of trees, and looking up saw a troop of
fifty or sixty elephants dashing away through a grove of mapani-trees.
Tom at once put spurs to his horse, unslung his large-bore
double-barrelled gun, and coming close up to a cow-elephant, sent a ball
into her behind the shoulder. She did not drop, so he gave her another
shot, when she fell heavily to t