Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/268

 various sorts abound, the lepidoptera especially exhibiting new species. Let proper means be taken to exterminate the tsetse-fly, and to guard against the prevalence of summer fever, and the rich soil and mild climate of the valleys would be found amply to repay a liberal cultivation, and would yield a profitable return of tropical produce.

It was by a slightly different route that we made our way back to Panda ma Tenka. On the Matopa river our servants shot a wild pig; and a little further up the valley some of our people discovered a dead elephant. Their attention was caught by a disgusting smell, which they thought they recognized; and pushing into the bushes they found the carcase of a huge male elephant, dead from gun-shot wounds. The adjacent flesh had been gnawed by lions, and one of the blacks declared that he saw a lion making off as we approached. Westbeech and Francis took possession of the ivory, leaving the carcase to the servants who had smelt it out. They cut off the feet, intending to carry them off as a dainty for their next meal, but the stench of them was so intolerable that we soon made them throw their tit-bit away. When cooked fresh the fleshy substance enclosed beneath the tough skin of the elephant’s foot is accounted as choice a morsel as a bear’s paw, but it is the only fragment of the brute that is in any way suited for human food.

So sore did my feet continue that it was with the greatest difficulty that I dragged myself along. The ladies, as they had done on the way out, walked the greater part of the distance between the falls and the Gashuma Flat; and apart from my own