Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/364

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The engineer who attends to the electric-light plant at the Victoria Falls Hotel is an intelligent young fellow who, with a brother, tried farming in a remote district in Rhodesia. They are about starving; they would have starved had not this brother gone to work. The other brother lives alone on the farm, and at intervals comes to the hotel for supplies provided by his brother. They will eventually desert their farm, without much doubt. . . . The young soldiers at the police camp are industrious hunters, and one of them says he lately killed a crocodile on the railroad bridge which crosses the Zambesi river below the falls. Crocodiles often travel considerable distances from the river; in returning to water, this one by accident struck the railroad track, and was following it across the bridge. The soldiers at the camp have all sorts of pets, including monkeys, which they pick up when young, and tame. They irrigate a considerable garden with water carried from the river by natives. This section must be a terrific place when the weather is at its worst; it is at its best now, and we stand it with difficulty.



Wednesday, April 2.—We said good-by to Victoria Falls this afternoon at 1:10, and left by train for the East Coast. Captain Moseley came to the station to see us, bringing all his hunting-dogs with him. To-*morrow morning at 3 o'clock he leaves for his new station in the interior, traveling in a wagon drawn by eight yoke of oxen and driven by two negroes. One of the negroes will sit up all night, to watch the graz-