I Was But A Tyro In Hunting, I Confess, Though I Had Shot A Little On The Plains Of America And Persia; Yet I Considered Myself A Fair Shot, And On Game Ground, And Within A Reasonable Proximity To Game, I Doubted Not But I Could Bring Some To Camp.

After a march of a mile through the tall grass of the open, we gained the glades between the jungles.

Unsuccessful here, after ever so much prying into fine hiding-places and lurking corners, I struck a trail well traversed by small antelope and hartebeest, which we followed. It led me into a jungle, and down a watercourse bisecting it; but, after following it for an hour, I lost it, and, in endeavouring to retrace it, lost my way. However, my pocket-compass stood me in good stead; and by it I steered for the open plain, in the centre of which stood the camp. But it was terribly hard work - this of plunging through an African jungle, ruinous to clothes, and trying to the cuticle. In order to travel quickly, I had donned a pair of flannel pyjamas, and my feet were encased in canvas shoes. As might be expected, before I had gone a few paces a branch of the acacia horrida - only one of a hundred such annoyances - caught the right leg of my pyjamas at the knee, and ripped it almost clean off; succeeding which a stumpy kolquall caught me by the shoulder, and another rip was the inevitable consequence.

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