From that time forth we actively carried on the capture of elephants, so that in a little while the elephant was the chief draught-beast in the Kenia, and could be employed wherever heavy weights had to be removed to short distances or to places inaccessible to waggons. This successful experiment with the elephants suggested to us the taming of other animals, for purposes, not merely of pleasure, but of utility. The first attempt was made upon the zebra, and was successful. Though the old animals were useless, the foals, when captured quite young, were tolerably tractable and not particularly shy; and in the second generation our tame zebras were not distinguishable from the best mules, except in colour. Ostriches and giraffes came next in the order of our domestic animals; but our trainers achieved their greatest triumph in taming the African buffalo. This is the most vicious, uncontrollable, and dangerous of all African beasts; and yet it was so thoroughly domesticated that in the course of years it completely supplanted the common ox as a draught-beast. The bulls that had grown up in a wild condition were, and remained, perfect devils; but the captured cows could be so thoroughly domesticated that they would eat out of their attendants' hands, and the buffaloes bred in a state of domestication exhibited exactly the same character as the ordinary domestic cattle. The bulls, especially when old, continued to be somewhat unreliable; but the cows and oxen, on the other hand, were as gentle and docile as any ruminant could be. They were never valued among us as milch kine--for, though their milk was rich, it was not great in quantity--but they were incomparable as draught-beasts. They were higher by half a foot than the largest domestic cattle; they measured two feet across the shoulders, and their horns were too thick at the base to be spanned by two hands. No load was too heavy for these gigantic beasts; two buffaloes would keep up their steady pace with a load that would soon have disabled four ordinary oxen. They bore hunger, thirst, heat, and rain better than their long-domesticated kindred; in short, they proved themselves invaluable in a country where good roads were not everywhere to be found. The third incident--But this really concerns only me personally, and belongs to this narrative merely so far as it relates to the mode of life and the social conditions of Eden Vale. It will therefore be best if I next tell how we lived, what our habits were, and how we worked in the new home, before the arrival of the main body of our brethren. CHAPTER VII