In another part of his narrative, Mr. Cumming thus describes a desperate battle with an elephant.

On the 27th I cast loose my horses at earliest dawn of day, and then I lay half asleep for two hours, when I arose to consume coffee and rhinoceros. Having breakfasted, I started with a party of natives to search for elephants in a southerly direction. We held along the gravelly bed of a periodical river, in which were abundance of holes excavated by the elephants in quest of water. Here the spoor of rhinoceros was extremely plentiful, and in every hole where they had drunk the print of the horn was visible. We soon found the spoor of an old bull elephant, which led us into a dense forest, where the ground was particularly unfavorable for spooring; we, however, threaded it out for a considerable distance, when it joined the spoor of other bulls.

The natives now requested me to halt, while the men went off in different directions to reconnoitre. In the mean time a tremendous conflagration was roaring and crackling close to windward of us. It was caused by the Bakalahari burning the old dry grass to enable the young to spring up with greater facility, whereby they retained the game in their dominions. The fire stretched away for many miles on either side of us, darkening the forest far to leeward with a dense and impenetrable canopy of smoke. Here we remained for about half an hour, when one of the men returned, reporting that he had discovered elephants. This I could scarcely credit, for I fancied that the extensive fire which raged so fearfully must have driven, not only elephants, but every living creature out of the district, The native, however, pointed to his eye, repeating the word "Klow," and signed to me to follow him.