the party of Simoens, and killed him while trying to escape on foot.  Selole imagined that I was another Italian, or, as he expressed it, “Siriatomba risen from the dead.”  In his message to Mburuma he even said that Mobala, and all the villages beyond, were utterly destroyed by our fire-arms, but the sight of Mobala himself, who had come to the village of Selole, led the brother of Mburuma to see at once that it was all a hoax.  But for this, the foolish fellow Selole might have given us trouble.

We saw many of the liberated captives of this Italian among the villages here, and Sekwebu found them to be Matebele.  The brother of Mburuma had a gun, which was the first we had seen in coming eastward.  Before we reached Mburuma my men went to attack a troop of elephants, as they were much in need of meat.  When the troop began to run, one of them fell into a hole, and before he could extricate himself an opportunity was afforded for all the men to throw their spears.  When he rose he was like a huge porcupine, for each of the seventy or eighty men had discharged more than one spear at him.  As they had no more, they sent for me to finish him.  In order to put him at once out of pain, I went to within twenty yards, there being a bank between us which he could not readily climb.  I rested the gun upon an ant-hill so as to take a steady aim; but, though I fired twelve two-ounce bullets, all I had, into different parts, I could not kill him.  As it was becoming dark, I advised my men to let him stand, being sure of finding him dead in the morning; but, though we searched all the next day, and went more than ten miles, we never saw him again.  I mention this to young men who may think that they will be able to hunt elephants on foot by adopting the Ceylon practice of killing them by one ball in the brain.  I believe that in Africa the practice of standing before an elephant, expecting to kill him with one shot, would be certain death to the hunter; and I would add, for the information of those who may think that, because I met with a great abundance of game here, they also might find rare sport, that the tsetse exists all along both banks of the Zambesi, and there can be no hunting by means of horses.  Hunting on foot in this climate is such excessively hard work, that I feel certain the keenest sportsman would very soon turn away from it in disgust.  I myself was rather glad, when furnished with the excuse that I had no longer any balls, to hand over all the hunting to my men, who had no more love for the sport than myself, as they never engaged in it except when forced by hunger.

Some of them gave me a hint to melt down my plate by asking if it were not lead.  I had two pewter plates and a piece of zinc which I now melted into bullets.  I also spent the remainder of my handkerchiefs in buying spears for them.  My men frequently surrounded herds of buffaloes and killed numbers of the calves.  I, too, exerted myself greatly; but, as I am now obliged to shoot with the left arm, I am a bad shot, and this, with the lightness of the bullets, made me very unsuccessful.  The more the hunger, the less my success, invariably.