him; I could not get over the barbarities which he permitted during his excursions. On one occasion, after wounding a female elephant that had been pursuing him, he allowed his servants to torture it for a couple of hours with their assegais before he put the poor brute out of its miseries by shooting it dead.
Although there had been no rain in the district for several months, the two days before we left Panda ma Tenka were wet and stormy. When we started we made but a very short progress on the first day, as my baggage proved too heavy for the cart, and I was obliged to halt and send back for a waggon; this did not arrive until the afternoon of the following day, but we lost no time in moving forwards again, and spent the night on the Gashuma Flat. Our encampment was an attraction to several lions that prowled around, ready to pounce upon any animal that might be scared from the enclosure.
Three out of my four servants spoke as many different dialects, Sesupia, Setonga, and Senansa, but they all understood the Sesuto-Serotse, so that from the chatter which they kept up I was able to pick up a number of colloquial expressions.
A short distance before we reached Saddler’s Pan, one of Westbeech’s servants had a narrow escape; having seen some zulu-hartebeests grazing a little way off, he approached them by degrees, and was about to fire when he found himself almost within the clutches of a lion that was watching the very same herd. He was glad enough to make a timely retreat.
Late in the evening of the 4th of October, all safe and sound we reached the Leshumo valley. Next
