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The path was well marked by elephants, hyenas, pallahs, and zebras, but for many a day no human foot had trod it. When the sun went down a deserted hamlet was reached, where we made comfortable beds for ourselves of grass. Firing muskets to attract the attention of those who have strayed is the usual resource in these cases.
There was variety, too, in the caps some had Scotch bonnets, others red nightcaps, a few had tall hats, ornamented with gold and silver cords and tassels, and a good many wore no covering at all except their own thickly-matted hair. Their faces were burned to every shade of red, brown, and black, from constant exposure, and they were strong as lions, wild as zebras, and frolicksome as kittens.
While it lasted, he got them interested in a new device. This was to knock off being pirates, for a while, and be Indians for a change. They were attracted by this idea; so it was not long before they were stripped, and striped from head to heel with black mud, like so many zebras all of them chiefs, of course and then they went tearing through the woods to attack an English settlement.
We went along all right for half a mile, the circus hands walking beside the zebras, to kill them if they tried to jump over a house, while I rode the bell mule.
I was about three hundred yards from the boma when my attention was drawn to a movement in the trees about a quarter of a mile away. I looked and saw what I first thought was a herd of zebras coming toward me. They looked dark against the faint light of early dawn and seemed surprisingly big. Then I realized! They were elephants!
But if the same person tells me he observed a zebra there, I might hesitate a little about accepting his testimony, unless I were well satisfied, not only as to his previous acquaintance with zebras, but as to his powers and opportunities of observation in the present case.
Asses and zebras are still found abundantly and widely scattered, but the wild horse of to-day is seen only in western Asia. What happened to those who remained in America we shall possibly never know. Some surmise that a fly not unlike the tsetse-fly of Africa killed them out.
The others came back to it, and, when we showed ourselves, much to the amusement of my companions, they lifted him up with their horns, and, half supporting him in the crowd, bore him away. All these wild animals usually gore a wounded companion, and expel him from the herd; even zebras bite and kick an unfortunate or a diseased one.
When the antelope and I overtook the boss canvasman, who was digging his heels into the ground trying to hold his zebra, I thought it was a good time to say something pleasant, so I said: "This is a lovely country we are passing through," but I never heard his reply, 'cause just then the zebra jumped over a big cactus and the boss canvasman went into it, and stayed there, yelling for a piece of ice, while the zebras that were dragging the treasurer and the ticket taker passed us.
Upon my arrival I found Jan, my Tottie driver, in great tribulation, it appearing that he had been beset by lions during the second night of my absence, and that the brutes had killed no less than three of the oxen and both zebras, despite the utmost efforts of himself and 'Ngulubi, the Bantu voorlouper; while two other oxen had died through eating tulip, a poisonous plant which he had too late discovered grew in profusion in the immediate neighbourhood of the outspan.
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