Our Course Next Day Passed Over The Upper Terrace And Through A Dense
Thorn Jungle.
Travelling is always difficult where there is no path,
but it is even more perplexing where the forest is cut up by many
game-tracks.
Here we got separated from one another, and a
rhinoceros with angry snort dashed at Dr. Livingstone as he stooped
to pick up a specimen of the wild fruit morula; but she strangely
stopped stock-still when less than her own length distant, and gave
him time to escape; a branch pulled out his watch as he ran, and
turning half round to grasp it, he got a distant glance of her and
her calf still standing on the selfsame spot, as if arrested in the
middle of her charge by an unseen hand. When about fifty yards off,
thinking his companions close behind, he shouted "Look out there!"
when off she rushed, snorting loudly, in another direction. The
Doctor usually went unarmed before this, but never afterwards.
A fine eland was shot by Dr. Kirk this afternoon, the first we have
killed. It was in first-rate condition, and remarkably fat; but the
meat, though so tempting in appearance, severely deranged all who
partook of it heartily, especially those who ate of the fat. Natives
who live in game countries, and are acquainted with the different
kinds of wild animals, have a prejudice against the fat of the eland,
the pallah, the zebra, hippopotamus, and pig; they never reject it,
however, the climate making the desire for all animal food very
strong; but they consider that it causes ulcers and leprosy, while
the fat of sheep and of oxen never produces any bad effects, unless
the animal is diseased.
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