ment for the right of drinking from their river. However, a resolute attitude on our part preserved the peace, and we were soon on excellent terms with the Wa-taita, buying fowls, maize, and honey at a great rate. On the morrow we skirted the little river of Bura for a few miles, and then, reluctantly leaving its belt of rich, majestic forest, plunged resolutely into the waterless wilderness which separated us from the base of Kilima-njaro.

Although the journey before us was a far longer one than that terrible march to Maungu, it was, nevertheless, marked by no sufferings from fatigue and thirst, for I had the men now well in hand, and was careful to ascertain that no one had started without a due supply of water. The country we passed through was indeed a wilderness, but yet rather park-like in its aspect. There was an entire absence of undergrowth, and tallish trees with cedarlike crowns rose at regular intervals, looking, in their uniformity of unvarying red trunks and bright green compact foliage, like an unskilfully painted landscape. Other noticeable features in the scene were the tall red ant-hills and, strange imitation, the tall red antelopes, a species of hartebeest,' resembling faintly in shape the form of a giraffe with sloping hind-quarters, high shoulders, and long neck. Being a deep redbrown in colour, and standing one by one stock-still at the approach of the caravan, it was really most difficult and puzzling sometimes to know which was hartebeest and which was ant-hill; for the long grass hiding the antelope's legs left merely a red-humped mass, which, until it moved, might well be the mound of red earth constructed by the white termites. The 1 Alcelaphus Cokei.

F

unconscious mimicry was rendered the more ludicrously exact sometimes by the sharply-pointed, flaglike leaves of a kind of squill-a liliaceous plantwhich frequently crowned the summit of the ant-hill, or grew at its base, thus suggesting the horns of an antelope, rather with the head erect, or browsing low down. The assimilation cannot have been fancied on my part, for it deceived even the sharp eyes of my men; and again and again a hartebeest would start into motion at twenty yards distance and gallop off, while I was patiently stalking an ant-hill, and crawling on my stomach through thorns and aloes, only to find the supposed antelope an irregular mass of red clay.

The great plain which lies between the country of Taita and the eastern base of Kilima-njaro swarms with game, especially where the land slopes gently towards Lake Jipe, which may be descried to the southward as a narrow slit of silvery white lying between a band of dull green forest and the purple wall of the Ugweno Mountains. As we marched along herds of bartebeest, gnu, eland, and buffalo defiled before us, wending their way slowly along their own beaten tracks to the accustomed drinking-place, where, poor fools, some of them were sure to lose their lives, for, lying in ambush in the forest tunnel, down which the thirsty creatures rush to the water, would be either lions, leopards, or human hunters, armed with poisoned arrow and broad-bladed spear. But however much a keen desire to drink might blind them to danger when they are near their goal, they were wary enough now, and their sentinels kept a sharp look-out on our movements; only the giddy zebras-most inquisitive of animals-risked their lives by galloping up to inspect the passing caravan. The sight of all this game was

potent enough to stir a hunting impulse in the soul of the most jaded traveller; and although I found it hard enough to plod along the dusty track in the rear of the caravan, and avoid the impulse to cast myself down and rest in every patch of sparsely scattered shade,

still I did every now and then make a sally at some wondering antelope that stood in the distance staring,

snorting, and occasionally stamping petulantly with its fore-feet at the strange, inexplicable, snake-like line of white-vestured men slowly winding over the plain. my attempts at stalking, and my snap-shots were too impatient and hurried to meet with any definite

But

success.

The fact is, in African travel, it is not easy to combine the accomplishment of twenty or thirty miles walked every day on foot, with the exploits of the chase, especially when haunted by the knowledge that every minute's delay that separates you from your water-supply is dangerous. You leave the road just to stalk a group of zebras grazing not more than two hundred yards off, and you think if you can only creep up to that ant-hill and hide behind it, you will get a splendidly easy shot. Well, the ant-hill is reached, but the zebras have moved off a little farther, and now there is a stumpy mimosa-tree between you and your aim. However, it is a matter of a few paces to crawl up to it and fire from behind its branches. You reach the tree, and just as you are going to raise your gun you crack a dead twig, and the zebras move and trot off some distance farther. Now it is too long a shot to risk, but as the game is grazing peacefully and unsuspiciously again, you may just as well creep up a little nearer and then fire. So you go down on allfours in the grass, and crawl along, putting your hands invariably down on cruel thorns or sharp twigs every time they touch the ground; your back aches with the snake-like posture you assume, and when at length you cautiously raise your head above the grass and dare to look frankly before you, you find the zebras have moved on again, and you either crawl after them, infatuated with the love of hunting, or in desperation foolishly fire your gun at a distant speck, and of course miss, when all that remains of the animals have stalked is a light cloud of red dust hanging you in the hot air. And now you become fully conscious of how foolish you have been to leave the caravan. How hot the sun is! And your blistered feet ache as