Following the river, we made good progress till a halt was called by the presence of a stupendous old bull elephant with magnificent tusks, who was dozing on the path. We shouted to him to get out of the way, and he slowly turned round, stalked towards us, and when within fifty yards curled up his trunk, spread his ears, rumbled and came. Crash went every load, and I found myself in a medley of tent and boxes, pots and pans, with a double .303 loaded with soft-nosed bullets, looking at him in amazement; but the shot fortunately turned him, and away he went, screaming and trumpeting, giving my blankets a parting kick as he swung round. This is the only time I have seen one aggressive without due cause. Owing to the absence of water and the quantity of plum-trees, of which they are very fond, there were enormous numbers of elephant along the river-bank, and except where they were on the path we scarcely noticed them, every day passing several herds. I was wild when I thought of the prodigious but futile efforts that Sharp and I made round the volcanoes to find them, when we had porters galore, while now, having no porters, I looked upon them as a nuisance, owing to the delay they caused. Here, and for some days afterwards, close to the line of bush, there was a well-defined river with a stream of one and a half to two miles an hour, which would be navigable for flat-bottomed punts. The numbers of hippo were incredible, literally thousands and thousands. At every two hundred yards there was a great purple bank of twenty, fifty, or a hundred lying with their bodies half exposed, while others were wandering about in every direction on the vegetation, islands, and mud-banks. They practically ignored our presence, though we often passed within ten yards of them. Other game was scarce; I only saw a few waterbuck, bushbuck, and once the track of a giraffe, though plenty of guinea-fowl, and a few ducks and geese; but these were of little use, as, on opening my last box of shot-cartridges, they fell to pieces, being eaten through and through with rust. At one village a native produced a recent number of _Black and White_, carefully wrapped up in a piece of goatskin, and pointed out with great glee a picture of Dreyfus; as I had no interpreter, and the natives no longer understood my ten words of pigeon Arabic, I have not the remotest conception how it came into this outlandish spot. It was very difficult to obtain supplies, owing to the general famine, so I shot another elephant, which came down to water near camp, and made my boys smoke a three-days’ supply of meat. The following day we saw two large herds of elephant, one mainly composed of good bulls. Some, showing splendid ivories, refused for a long time to leave the path. We were compelled to stone them. Then, making good progress, we camped opposite a ferry, which led to an island where I could see some natives. They quickly collected, and in a few