highest opinion of a Purdey of 10-bore, which burnt five or six drachms of fine powder, and at short distances drove its ball home. This gun did nearly all my work. I had besides a 12-bore Westley-Richards, a light rifle, and a heavy single-barrelled one carrying two-oz. belted balls. This last was a beast of a tool, and once--I never gave it a second chance--nearly cost me my life, by stinging, without seriously wounding, a bull elephant. The infuriated brute charged nine or ten times wickedly, and the number might have been doubled had I not at last got hold of the Purdey, when he fell to the first shot. We had no breech-loaders in those days, save the disconnecting one, and that would have been useless, for we had to load as we galloped through the thick bush, and the stock and barrel would soon have been wrenched asunder or so strained as to prevent their coming accurately into contact again. The Purdey gun has a second history which gives it more value in my eyes than the good work it did for me. I lent it to Baker when he went up the Nile, and it had the honour, I believe, of being left with Lady Baker to be used, if required, during her husband’s enforced absences. Baker returned it to me with a note apologising for the homeliness of the ramrod--a thornstick which still rests in the ferrules--adding that having to defend themselves from a sudden attack, his man Richarn, being hard pressed whilst loading, had fired the original ramrod into a chief’s stomach, from which they had no opportunity of extracting it. I am sorry now for all the fine old beasts I have killed; but I was young then, there was excitement in the work, I had large numbers of men to feed, and if these are not considered sound excuses for slaughter, the regret is lightened by the knowledge that every animal, save three elephants, was eaten by man, and so put to a good use. I have no notes, and though many scenes and adventures stand out sharply enough, the sequence of events and surroundings is not always very clear. If my short narrative seems to take too much the form of a rather bald account of personal adventure, I must apologise; and I may add that the nature and habits generally of the animals I met with are now so well known, and have over and over again been so well described by competent writers, that my relations with a few individuals of their families must be the burden of my song.