58 SPORT BY THE RIVER leopard also takes his toll of their numbers, seizing them at night as they roost in the bushes.

In the early days of Rhodesia, when the memory of Lobengula still was fresh, travel was done in less luxurious fashion than in the Sudan of to-day—or, at least, in those parts where pack-animals can be employed. Long tramps with porters may be recalled, with a minimum of impedimenta ; no camp-bed, no canvas bath, no cook or attendant, but merely the sheepskin kaross on the hard ground, the tins of bully beef, the billy and kettle for the provision of a hard-earned meal, and the rampart of baggage and thorns to give a semblance of protection in the darkness ot the night.

Here the hot bath awaits one's return, the bathroom being bounded by a curtain hung up on one side, and the wide world on three others, a large grass mat serving as a carpet. In place of bully beef, or "road rations," stewed by oneself at the close of a tiring day, the dinner is ready to time, served on a white tablecloth. Use and custom are everything. In an incredibly short time after the end of a march, Abid would scrape a narrow hole in the ground, light a fire, and, placing two irons across it, prepare a meal, say, of soup, ariel tongue and onions, fillet of reed-buck, blanc-mange and prunes.

The failure so often is the bread, which the Arab insists on making with yeast, in tins and as heavy as lead, whereas in Rhodesia one made excellent loaves with the aid of baking-powder and an ant-