I generally used the “direct” telescope of my sextant for day purposes; it is in fact a small single opera-glass, and I liked it very much. Elephant shooting was out of the question at ’Tounobis for men in our position, without horses and without dogs. The river-bed is perfectly bare, and very light in colour, from the quantity of slabs of limestone. I should be extremely sorry to be chased by any animal over it. The Hottentots made such a noise that the elephants only came down twice whilst I was there; the first time we ran up to them and fired among their legs; there were fourteen in the herd, fine fellows, standing in a row fronting us in the open moonshine. None of us dared go nearer than sixty yards; we there had the shelter of a low slab in the limestone, but beyond the ground was quite flat. I should think the legs were the best part to fire at in these cases, because if the bullet strikes the bone it is sure to break it, and an elephant on three legs is like a waggon on three wheels, quite brought to a stand-still; and, again, if the bone be missed, the wound, if any, is only a flesh wound, and does not kill the animal. Our shots produced no effect, except some very angry trumpeting from the elephants, who first faced us and then decamped. The second time we let them alone, and a young bull fell into one of the wells, which we shot. I think I would have given anything for horses at ’Tounobis. I should have enjoyed myself amazingly if I had had them. There were no lions whatever there; they and rhinoceroses do not hit it off together, and are seldom found in numbers at the same place. A rhinoceros is a sulky morose brute, and it is very ridiculous to watch a sedate herd of gnus bullied by one of them. He runs among them and pokes about with his horn, while they scamper and scurry away from him in great alarm. He surely must often kill them. For my own taste, I should like to spend nights perched up in some tree with a powerful night glass watching these night frolics and attacks. I really do not much care about shooting the animals, though it makes a consummation to the night work, as the death of the fox does to a fox hunt, but it is the least pleasurable part of the whole. Great fun seems to go on among the different animals; jackals are always seen and are always amusing; their impudence is intolerable; they know that you do not want to shoot them, and will often sit in front of your screen and stare you in the face. Sometimes, whilst straining your eyes at the dimly seen bushes about you, the branched stem of one gradually forms itself into the graceful head of some small antelope. The change is like that of a dissolving view, the object had been under your notice for a minute, yet you could not tell when it ceased to be a bush and became an animal. The young rhinoceroses must be much chased by the hyenas and wild dogs, for you never find one, either young or old, whose ears do not show marks of having been sadly bitten.