The snake, finding the ground too hot for him, relaxed his coils, and, suddenly bringing round his head to the front, he sprang out at us like an arrow, with his immense and hideous mouth opened to its largest dimensions, and before I could get out of the way he was clean out of his hole, and made a second spring, throwing himself forward about eight or ten feet, and snapping his horrid fangs within a foot of my legs. I sprang out of his way, and, getting hold of the green bough I had cut, returned to the charge. The snake was now gliding along at top speed: he knew the ground well, and was making for a mass of broken rocks, where he would have been beyond my reach, but before he could gain this place of refuge I caught him two or three tremendous whacks on the head. He, however, held on, and gained a pool of muddy water, which he was rapidly crossing, when I again belabored him, and at length reduced his pace to a stand. We then hanged him by the neck to a bough of a tree, and in about fifteen minutes he seemed dead, but he again became very troublesome during the operation of skinning, twisting his body in all manner of ways. This serpent measured fourteen feet. Adventure with Buffalo and Elephant. The Cape Buffalo we have already described, and we now refer to him again only for the purpose of quoting Mr. Cumming's account of a spirited fight with one. He thus relates the affair. On the evening of the next day I had a glorious row with an old bull buffalo: he was the only large bull in a fine herd of cows. I found their spoor while walking ahead of the wagon, and following it up, I came upon a part of the herd feeding quietly in a dense part of the forest. I fired my first shot at a cow, which I wounded. The other half of the herd then came up right in my face, within six yards of me. They would have trampled on me if I had not sung out in their faces and turned them. I selected the old bull and sent a bullet into his shoulder. The herd then crashed along through the jungle to my right, but he at once broke away from them and took to my left. On examining his spoor, I found it bloody. I then went to meet my wagons, which I heard coming on, and, ordering the men to outspan, I took all my dogs to the spoor. They ran it up in fine style, and in a few minutes the silence of the forest was disturbed by a tremendous bay. On running towards the sound I met the old fellow coming on towards the wagons, with all my dogs after him. I saluted him with a second ball in the shoulder; he held on and took up a position in the thicket within forty yards of the wagons, where I finished him. He carried a most splendid head. In another part of his narrative, Mr. Cumming thus describes a desperate battle with an elephant.