When The Day Is Over, And The Man,
Fatigued By Intense Heat And A Hard Day's Work, Feels Himself Refreshed
By a bath and a change of clothes, the incurable itching of a thousand
tick-bites destroys all his pleasure;
He finds himself streaming with
blood from leech-bites, and for the time he feels disgusted with the
country. First-rate sport can alone compensate for all these annoyances.
There is a portion of the Park country known as Dimbooldene. In this
part there is a cave formed by a large overhanging rock, which is a much
cooler residence than the tent. Here we accordingly bivouacked, the cave
being sufficiently large to contain the horses in addition to ourselves
and servants. After a delightfully cool night, free from mosquitoes, we
made a day of it, but we walked from sunrise till 5 P.M. without seeing
a sign of an elephant. At length, from the top of a high hill on the
very confines of the Park country, we looked across a deep valley, and
with the assistance of the telescope we plainly distinguished a large
single elephant feeding on the grassy side of an opposite mountain. To
cross the deep valley that separated us, and to ascend the mountain,
would have taken several hours, and at this time of the day it was
impracticable; we were thus compelled to turn our backs upon the game,
and return towards our rocky home. Tired, more from our want of success
than from the day's work, we strolled leisurely along, and we were
talking of the best plan to be adopted for the next day's work, when I
suddenly observed a herd of eight elephants going up the side of a small
hill at their best pace within 200 yards of us. They had just quitted a
small jungle at the bottom of a ravine, and they had been alarmed by our
approach.
Off we started in pursuit, down the rugged side of the hill we were
descending, and up the opposite hill, upon the elephants' tracks, as
hard as we could run. Just as we reached the top of the hill, the
elephants were entering a small jungle on the other side. My brother got
a shot, and killed the last of the herd; in another moment they had
disappeared. It had been a sharp burst up the steep hill, and we stopped
to breathe, but we were almost immediately in pursuit again, as we saw
the herd emerge from the jungle at the base of the hill, and plough
their way through a vast field of high lemon grass.
Upon arriving on their tracks, they had fairly distanced us. The grass,
which was as thick as a hedge, was trodden into lanes by the elephants,
and upon either side it stood like a wall ten or twelve feet high. Upon
these tracks we ran along for some time, until it became dusk. We
halted, and were consulting as to the prudence of continuing the chase
at this late hour, when we suddenly heard the cracking of the branches
in a small jungle in a hollow close to our left, and upon taking a
position upon some rising ground, we distinctly saw several elephants
standing in the high grass about a hundred paces before us, close to the
edge of the jungle in which the remaining portion of the herd was
concealed.
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