My horse was lost; my man had never even accompanied me, having lagged behind at the very commencement of the hunt. I had lost my rifle in the high grass, as I had been forced to make a short run from the spot before I knew that the elephant had followed the horse; thus I was nearly an hour before I found it, and also my azimuth compass that had fallen from my belt pouch. After much shouting and whistling, my mounted man arrived, and making him dismount, I rode my little horse Mouse, and returned to the path. My horse Filfil was lost. As a rule, hunting during the march should be avoided, and I had now paid dearly for the indiscretion. I reached the Atabbi river about eighteen miles from Obbo. This is a fine perennial stream flowing from the Madi mountains towards the west, forming an affluent of the Asua river. There was a good ford, with a hard gravel and rocky bottom, over which the horse partly waded and occasionally swam. There were fresh tracks of immense herds of elephants with which the country abounded, and I heard them trumpeting in the distance. Ascending rising ground in perfectly open prairie on the opposite side of Atabbi, I saw a dense herd of about two hundred elephants--they were about a mile distant, and were moving slowly through the high grass. Just as I was riding along the path watching the immense herd, a Tetel (hartebeest) sprang from the grass in which he had been concealed, and fortunately he galloped across a small open space, where the high grass had been destroyed by the elephants. A quick shot from the little Fletcher 24 rifle doubled him up; but, recovering himself almost immediately, he was just disappearing when a shot from the left-hand barrel broke his back, to the intense delight of my people. We accordingly bivouacked for the night, and the fires were soon blazing upon a dry plateau of granite rock about seventy feet square that I had chosen for a resting-place. In the saucer-shaped hollows of the rock was good clear water from the rain of the preceding day; thus we had all the luxuries that could be desired--fire, food, and water. I seldom used a bedstead unless in camp; thus my couch was quickly and simply made upon the hard rock, softened by the addition of an armful of green boughs, upon which I laid an untanned ox-hide, and spread my Scotch plaid. My cap formed my pillow, and my handy little Fletcher rifle lay by my side beneath the plaid, together with my hunting knife; these faithful friends were never out of reach either by night or day.