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.
I may here add an adventure with an elephant of one who has had
more narrow escapes than any man living, but whose modesty
has always prevented him from publishing any thing about himself.
When we were on the banks of the Zouga in 1850, Mr. Oswell
pursued one of these animals into the dense, thick, thorny bushes
met with on the margin of that river, and to which the elephant
usually flees for safety.
