saddle ‘Colesberg.’ In a few minutes the giraffes were slowly advancing within two hundred yards, stretching their graceful necks, and gazing in wonder at the unwonted wagons. Grasping my rifle, I now mounted ‘Colesberg,’ and rode slowly toward them. They continued gazing at the wagons until I was within one hundred yards of them, when, whisking their long tails over their rumps, they made off at an easy canter. As I pressed upon them they increased their pace; but ‘Colesberg’ had much the speed of them, and before we had proceeded half a mile I was riding by the shoulder of a dark-chestnut old bull, whose head towered high above the rest. Letting fly at the gallop, I wounded him behind the shoulder; soon after which I broke him from the herd, and presently going ahead of him, he came to a stand. I then gave him a second bullet, somewhere near the first. These two shots had taken effect and he was now in my power, but I would not lay him low so far from camp; so, having waited until he had regained his breath, I drove him half way back toward the wagons. Here he became obstreperous; so loading one barrel, and pointing my rifle toward the clouds, I shot him in the throat, when, rearing high, he fell backward and expired. This was a magnificent specimen of the giraffe, measuring upward of eighteen feet in height. I stood for nearly half an hour engrossed in the contemplation of his extreme beauty and gigantic proportions; and, if there had been no elephants, I could have exclaimed, like Duke Alexander of Gordon when he killed the famous old stag with seventeen tine, ‘Now I can die happy.’ But I longed for an encounter with the noble elephants, and I thought little more of the giraffe than if I had killed a gemsbok or an eland.” And in another place he describes his second success with the camelopard: “We now bent our steps homeward. We had not ridden many miles when we observed a herd of fifteen camelopards browsing quietly in an open glade of the forest. After a very severe chase, in the course of which they stretched out into a magnificent widely extended front, keeping their line with a regularity worthy of a troop of dragoons, I succeeded in separating a fine bull, upward of eighteen feet in height, from the rest of the herd, and brought him to the ground within a short distance of the camp. The Bechuanas expressed themselves delighted at my success. They kindled a fire and slept beside the carcass, which they very soon reduced to bil-tongue and marrow-bones.” [Illustration: RUNNING DOWN ELANDS.] Mr. Cumming’s first successful encounter with elephants was one of the most exciting of all. It is thus related: “Having followed the spoor for a short distance, old Mutchuisho became extremely excited, and told me that we were close to the elephants. Two or three men quickly ascended the tallest trees that stood near us, but they could not see the elephants. Mutchuisho then extended men to the right and left, while we continued on the spoor.