The old chief again came to me and asked me what I was going to kill. I suggested eland for a change; and knowing that there were several herds near where I had killed the rhinoceros, I set off in that direction, my local guides carefully placing a bunch of leaves under a bush on the left-hand side of the path. This, they informed me, ensured success. The country was full of splendid hunting-grounds; the young grass was sprouting from the black, peaty soil, and the new foliage of the trees afforded grateful shade, beneath which one could walk for hours without encountering any undergrowth. The spoor of buffalo, rhinoceros, sable, and hartebeeste was plentiful, but nothing would satisfy me except eland, and it was not till midday that I found tracks fresh enough to follow. A six-mile burst brought me in sight of a herd of twenty, and I was creeping round under cover of some trees to obtain a good shot at the leading bull when a boy, who had followed me from the village, let off a dozen ear-piercing whistles to inform me that he too had seen them. Away dashed the eland, and any one who has once followed alarmed eland does not eagerly repeat the mistake. They usually keep up a steady trot till they are clear of the obnoxious neighbourhood, and when they do stand are so wary that approach is impossible. The offending native was an ordinary type of the creatures depicted in books as wonderful hunters and trackers. Personally I have never found a native of Africa who was anything but an abominable nuisance out hunting; and after many trials I strictly confined my hunting attendants to one or two gun-bearers whom I trained to act instantly on a definite set of signs, and never used them for any purpose, except to occasionally follow obvious spoor when I wanted to rest my eyes; even then they needed watching, or they would go wrong. The Bushmen are, of course, an exception to this rule. On my way back to camp I was startled by a deafening report and the shriek of a bullet past my head. The boy who was carrying my 4-bore had slipped the safety-bolt back, and the trigger had caught in a twig. He was, of course, carrying the gun loosely on his shoulder, and the effect of the explosion of fourteen drams of powder was terrific. It knocked him several feet off the path and stunned him, while the gun described a graceful parabola, and landed, muzzle downwards, on a patch of soft soil, fortunately escaping damage. A messenger arrived in the evening with a note to the effect that the stray baggage had arrived, and the following day I returned to Chiromo after a most enjoyable trip. *CHAPTER V.* *BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA AND LAKE NYASSA.*