The peril and excitement of elephant hunting can not be realized by any one who has known only the big, placid elephants of the circus, or fed peanuts to a gentle-eyed pachyderm in the park. To the person thus circumscribed in his outlook, the idea of killing an elephant and calling it sport is little short of criminal. It would seem like going out in the barnyard and slaying a friendly old family horse.

That was my point of view before I went to Africa, but later experiences caused the point of view to shift considerably. If any one thinks that elephant hunting is an occasion for lightsome merrymaking he had better not meet the African elephant in the rough. Most people are acquainted with only the Indian elephant, the kind commonly seen in captivity, and judge from him that the elephant is a sort of semi-domesticated beast of burden, like the camel and the ox. Yet the Indian elephant is about as much like his African brother as a tomcat is like a tiger.

Many African hunters consider elephant hunting more dangerous than lion, rhino, or buffalo hunting, any one of which can hardly be called an indoor sport. These are the four animals that are classed as "royal game" in game law parlance, and each one when aroused is sufficiently diverting to dispel any lassitude produced by the climate. It is wakeful sport—hunting these four kinds of game—and in my experience elephant hunting is the "most wakefullest" of them all.

In my several months of African hunting I had four different encounters with elephants. The first two were on Mount Kenia and the last two were on the Guas Ngishu Plateau, near where it merges into the lower slopes of Mount Elgon. The first and the fourth experiences were terrifying ones, never to be forgotten. An Englishman, if he were to describe them, would say "they were rather nasty, you know," which indicates how really serious they were. The second and the third experiences were interesting, but not particularly dangerous.

Mount Kenia is a great motherly mountain that spreads over an immense area and raises its snow-capped peaks over eighteen thousand feet above the equator. The lower slopes are as beautiful as a park and are covered with the fields and the herds of the prosperous Kikuyus and other tribes. Scores of native villages of varying sizes are picturesquely planted among the banana groves and wooded valleys on this lower slope, each with its local chief, or sultan, and each tribe with its head sultan.

In a day's "trek" one meets many sultans with their more or less naked retinues, and every one of them spits on his hand, presses it to his forehead, and shakes hands with you. It is the form of greeting among the Kikuyus, and, in my opinion, might be improved. These people lead a happy pastoral life amid surroundings of exceptional beauty. Above the cultivated shambas, or fields of sweet potatoes and tobacco and sugar and groves of bananas, comes a strip of low bush country. It is a mile or two wide, scarcely ten feet high, and so dense that nothing but an elephant could force its way through the walls of vegetation. Most of the bushes are blackberry and are thorny.

The elephants in their centuries of travel about the slopes have made trails through this dense bush, and it is only by following these trails that one can reach the upper heights of the mountain. Above the bush belt comes the great forest belt, sublimely grand in its hugeness and beauty, and above this belt comes the encircling band of bamboo forest that reaches up to the timber line. There are probably five hundred thousand acres of forest country in which the Kenia elephant may live and wander and bring up his children. He has made trails that weave and wind through the twilight shades of the forest, and the only ways in which a man may penetrate to his haunts are by these ancient trails. Mount Kenia, as seen from afar, looks soft and green and easy to stroll up, but no man unguided could ever find his way out if once lost in the labyrinth of trails that criss-cross in the forest.

For many years the elephants of Kenia have been practically secure from the white hunter with his high-powered rifles. Warfare between the native tribes on the slopes has been so constant that it was not until three or four years ago that it was considered reasonably safe for the government to allow hunting parties to invade the south side of the mountain. Prior to that time the elephant's most formidable enemies were the native hunter, who fought with poisoned spears and built deep pits in the trails, pits cleverly concealed with thin strips of bamboo and dried leaves, and the ivory hunting poachers. In 1906 the government granted permission to Mr. Akeley to enter this hitherto closed district to secure specimens for the Field Museum, and even then there was only a narrow strip that was free from tribal warfare. It was at that time that his party secured seven splendid tuskers, one of which, a one-hundred-fifteen-pound tusker shot by Mrs. Akeley, was the largest ever killed on Mount Kenia. And it was to this district that Mr. Akeley led our safari late in October to try again for elephants on the old familiar stamping ground. We pitched our camp in a lovely spot where one of his camps had stood three years before, just at the edge of the thick bush and on the upper edge of the shambas. News travels quickly in this country, and in a short time many of his old Kikuyu friends were at our camping place. One or two of the old guides were on hand to lead the way into elephant haunts and the natives near our camp reported that the elephants had been coming down into their fields during the last few days. Some had been heard only the day before. So the prospects looked most promising, and we started on a little hunt the first afternoon after arriving in camp.

We took one tent and about twenty porters, for when one starts on an elephant trail there is no telling how long he will be gone or where he may be led. We expected that we would have to climb up through the strip of underbrush, and perhaps even as far up as the bamboos, in which event we might be gone two or three days. In addition to the porters we had our gunbearers and a couple of native guides. One of these was an old Wanderobo, or man of the forest, who had spent his life in the solitudes of the mountain and was probably more familiar with the trails than any other man. He wore a single piece of skin thrown over his shoulders and carried a big poisoned elephant spear with a barb of iron that remains in the elephant when driven in by the weight of the heavy wooden shaft. The barb was now covered with a protective binding of leaves. He led the way, silent and mild-eyed and very naked, and the curious little skin-tight cap that he wore made him look like an old woman. As we proceeded, other natives attached themselves to us as guides, so that by the time we were out half an hour there were four or five savages in the van.

No words can convey to the imagination the density of that first strip of bush. It was like walking between solid walls of vegetation, matted and tangled and bright with half-ripened blackberries. The walls were too high to see over except as occasionally we could catch glimpses of tree-tops somewhere ahead. We wound in and out along the tortuous path, and it was also torture-ous, for the thorn bushes scratched our hands and faces and even sent their stickers through the cloth into our knees. The effect on the barelegged porters was doubtless much worse.

After a couple of hours of marching in those cañons of vegetation we entered the lower edge of the forest and left the underbrush behind. We soon struck a fairly fresh elephant trail and for an hour wound in and out among the trees, stumbling over "monkey ropes" and gingerly avoiding old elephant pits. There were dozens of these, and if it had not been for the fact that our old guide carefully piloted us past them I'm certain more than one of us would have plunged down on to the sharpened stakes at the bottom. Some of the traps were so cleverly concealed that only a Wanderobo could detect them. In places the forest was like the stately aisles of a great shadowy cathedral, with giant cedars and camphor-wood trees rising in towering columns high above where the graceful festoons of liana and moss imparted an imposing scene of vastness and tropical beauty. In such places the ground was clean and springy to the footfall and the impression of a splendid solitude was such as one feels in a great deserted cathedral. At times we crossed matted and snaky-looking little streams that trickled through the decaying vegetation, where the feet of countless elephants had worn deep holes far down in the mud. Then, after long and circuitous marching, we would find ourselves traversing spots where we had been an hour before.

The elephant apparently moves about without much definition of purpose, at least when he is idling away his time, and the trail we were following led in all directions like a mystic maze. At this time I was hopelessly lost, and if left alone could probably never have found my way out again. So we quickened our steps lest the guides should get too far ahead of us. In those cool depths of the forest, into which only occasional shafts of sunlight filtered, the air was cold and damp, so much so that even the old Wanderobo got cold. It made me cold to look at his thin, old bare legs, but then I suppose his legs were as much accustomed to exposure as my hands were, and it's all a matter of getting used to it.

Our porters, especially those that were most heavily loaded, were falling behind and there was grave danger of losing them. In fact, a little later we did lose them. The trail became fresher and, to my dismay, led downward again and into that hopeless mass of underbrush which at this point extended some distance into the lower levels of the forest. We could not see in any direction more than twenty-five feet—except above. If our lives had depended on it we could not have penetrated the dense matted barriers of vegetation on each side of the narrow trail. The bare thought of meeting an elephant in such a place sent a cold chill down the back. If he happened to be coming toward us our only hope was in killing him before he could charge twenty-five feet, and, if we did kill him, to avoid being crushed by his body as it plunged forward. Without question it was the worst place in the world to encounter an elephant. And I prayed that we might get into more open forest before we came up with the ones we were trailing. You can't imagine how earnestly we all joined in that prayer.

It was at this unpropitious moment that we heard—startlingly near—the sharp crash of a tusk against a tree somewhere just ahead. It was a most unwelcome sound. There was no way of determining where the elephant was, for we were hemmed in by solid walls of bush and could not have seen an elephant ten feet on either side of the narrow trail. We also didn't know whether he was coming or going or whether he was on our trail or some other one of the maze of trails.

We quickly prepared for the worst. With our three heavy guns we crouched in the trail, waiting for the huge bulk of an elephant to loom up before us. Then came another thunderous crash to our right—and it seemed scarcely fifty yards away. Then a shrill squeal of a startled elephant off to our left and still another to the rear. Some elephants had evidently just caught our scent, and if the rest of the elephants became alarmed and started a stampede through the bush the situation would become extremely irksome for a man of quiet-loving tendencies. The thought of elephants charging down those narrow trails, perhaps from two directions at once, was one that started a copious flow of cold perspiration. We waited for several years of intense apprehension. There was absolute silence. The elephants also were evidently awaiting further developments.

Then we edged slowly onward along the trail, approaching each turning with extreme caution and then edging on to the next. Somewhere ahead and on two sides of us there were real, live, wild elephants that probably were not in a mood to welcome visitors from Chicago. How near they were we didn't know—except that the sounds had come from very near, certainly not more than a hundred yards—and we hoped that we might go safely forward to where the bush would be thin enough to allow us to see our surroundings. But there was no clearing. Several times a crash of underbrush either ahead or to one side brought us to anxious attention with fingers at the trigger guards. At last, after what seemed to be hours of nervous tension, we came to a crossing of trails, down which we could see in four directions thirty or forty feet. A large tree grew near the intersection of the trails, and here we waited within reach of its friendly protection. It was much more reassuring than to stand poised in a narrow trail with no possibility of sidestepping a charge. We waited at the crossing for further sounds of the elephants—waited for some time with rifles ready and then gradually relaxed our taut nerves. A line of porters with their burdens were huddled in one of the trails awaiting developments. I took a picture of the situation and had stood my rifle against the tree, and sat down to whisper the situation over. All immediate danger seemed to have passed. It seemed to, but it hadn't.

Like a sudden unexpected explosion of a thirteen-inch gun there was a thundering crash in the bushes behind the porters, then a perfect avalanche of terrified porters, a dropping of bundles, a wild dash for the protection of the tree, and a bunch of the most startled white men ever seen on Mount Kenia. I reached the tree in two jumps, and three would have been a good record. The crashing of bushes and small trees at our elbows marked the course of a frenzied or frightened elephant, and to our intense relief the sounds diminished as the animal receded. I don't think I was ever so frightened in my life. But I had company. I didn't monopolize all the fright that was used in those few seconds of terror.

We then decided that there was no sane excuse for hunting elephants under such conditions. We at least demanded that we ought to see what we were hunting rather than blindly stumble through dense bush with elephants all around us. So we beat a masterly retreat, not without two more serious threats from the hidden elephants. A boy was sent up a tree to try to locate the elephants, but even up there it was impossible to distinguish anything in the mass of vegetation around. We fired guns to frighten away the animals, but at each report there was only a restless rustle in the brush that said that they were still there and waiting, perhaps as badly scared as we were.

My second elephant experience came the next day.

We started forth again, with a single tent, our guides and gunbearers, a cook and a couple of tent boys and twenty porters. This time we politely ignored all elephant trails in the dense bush and pushed on through the forest. Here it was infinitely better, for one could see some distance in all directions. We climbed steadily for a couple of thousand feet, always in forest so wild and grand and beautiful as to exceed all dreams of what an African forest could be. It more than fulfilled the preconceptions of a tropical forest such as you see described in stories of the Congo and the Amazon.

The air was cold in the shadows, but pleasant in the little open glades that occasionally spread out before us. Once or twice in the heart of that overwhelming forest we found little circular clearings so devoid of trees as to seem like artificial clearings. Once we found the skull of an elephant and scores of times we narrowly escaped the deep elephant traps that lay in our paths. Many times we saw evidences of the giant forest pig that lives on Mount Kenia and has only once or twice been killed by a white man. Sometimes we came to deep ravines with sides that led for a hundred feet almost perpendicularly through tangles of creepers and bogs of rotted vegetation.

We dragged ourselves up by clinging to vines and monkey ropes. On all sides was a solitude so vast as almost to overpower the senses. The sounds of bird life seemed only to intensify the effect of solitude. Once in a while we came upon evidences of human habitation, little huts of twigs and leaves, where the Wanderobo, or man of the forest, lived and hunted. Up in some of the trees were thin cylindrical wooden honey pots, some of them ages old and some comparatively new. And in the lower levels of the forest we saw where the Kikuyu women had come up for firewood. For some strange reason the elephants are not afraid of the native women and will not be disturbed by the sight of one of them. After seeing the women I am not surprised that they feel that way about it, but I don't see how they can tell the women from the men. Possibly because they know that only the women do such manual labor as to carry wood.

In the afternoon we reached the bamboos which lie above the forest belt. Here the ground is clean and heavily carpeted with dry bamboo leaves. The bamboos grow close together, all seemingly of the same size, and are pervaded with a cool, greenish shadow that is almost sunny in comparison with the deep, solemn shades of the great forest.

Then we struck a trail. The old Wanderobo guide said it was only an hour or so old and that we should soon overtake the elephant. It was evidently only one elephant and not a large one. It is fascinating to watch an experienced elephant hunter and to see how eloquent the trail is to him. A broken twig means something, the blades of grass turned a certain way will distinguish the fresh trail from the old one, the footprints in the soft earth, the droppings—all tell a definite story to him, and he knows when he is drawing down upon his quarry. As we proceeded his movements became slower and more cautious, and the plodding drudgery of following an elephant trail gave way to suppressed excitement.

Slower and slower he went, and finally he indicated that only the gunbearers and ourselves should continue. The porters were left behind, and in single file we moved on tiptoe along the trail. Then he stopped and by his attitude said that the quest was ended. The elephant was there. One by one we edged forward, and there, thirty yards away, partly hidden by slender bamboos, stood a motionless elephant. He seemed to be the biggest one I had ever seen. He was quartering, head away from us, and we could not see his tusks. If they were big, we were to shoot; if not, we were to let him alone. As we watched and waited for his head to turn we noticed that his ears began to wave slowly back and forth, like the gills of a fish as it breathes. The head slowly and almost imperceptibly turned, and Akeley signaled me to shoot. From where I stood I could not see the tusks at first, but as his head turned more I saw the great white shafts of ivory. The visible ivory was evidently about four feet long, and indicated that he carried forty or fifty pounds of ivory. Then, quicker than a wink, the great dark mass was galvanized into motion. He darted forward, crashing through the bamboo as though it had been a bed of reeds, and in five seconds had disappeared. For some moments we heard his great form crashing away, farther and farther, until it finally died out in the distance.

It was the first wild elephant I had ever seen, and it is photographed on my memory so vividly as never to be forgotten. I was more than half glad that I had not shot and that he had got away unharmed.

That night we camped in a little circular clearing which the Akeleys called "Tembo Circus," for it was near this same clearing that one of their large elephants had been killed three years before, and in the clearing the skin had been prepared for preservation. All about us stretched the vast forest, full of strange night sounds and spectral in the darkness. In the morning we awoke in a dense cloud and did not break camp until afternoon. Our Kikuyu and Wanderobo guides were sent out with promises of liberal backsheesh to find fresh trails, but they returned with unfavorable reports, so we marched back to the main camp again.

Thus ended our Kenia elephant experience, for a letter from Colonel Roosevelt, asking Mr. Akeley if he could come to Nairobi for a conference on their elephant group, led to our departure from the Mount Kenia country.

The other two elephant experiences were much more spectacular and perhaps are worthy of a separate story.

The Mount Elgon elephants have a very bad reputation. The district is remote from government protection and for years the herds have been the prey of Swahili and Arab ivory hunters, as well as poachers of all sorts who have come over the Uganda border or down from the savage Turkana and Suk countries on the north. As a natural consequence of this unrestricted poaching the herds have been hunted and harassed so much that most of the large bull elephants with big ivory have been killed, leaving for the greater part big herds of cows and young elephants made savage and vicious by their persecution. Elephant hunters who have conscientiously hunted the district bring in reports of having seen herds of several hundred elephants, most of which were cows and calves, and of having seen no bulls of large size.

The government game license permits the holder to kill two elephants, the ivory of each to be at least sixty pounds. This means a fairly large elephant and may be either a bull or a cow. The cow ivory, however, rarely reaches that weight and consequently the bulls are the ones the hunters are after and the ones that have gradually been so greatly reduced in numbers. The elephants of this district roam the slopes of the mountains and often make long swinging trips out in the broad stretches of the Guas Ngishu Plateau to the eastward, in all a district probably fifty miles wide by sixty or seventy miles long.

The hunters who invade this section usually march north from the railroad at a point near Victoria Nyanza, turn westward at a little settlement called Sergoi, and continue in that direction until they reach the Nzoia River. Naturally, these names will mean nothing to one not familiar with the country, but perhaps by saying that the trip means at least ten days of steady marching in a remote and unsettled country, far from sources of supplies, I will be able to convey a faint idea of how hard it is to reach the elephant country.

Our purpose in making this long trip of ten weeks or more was to try for black-maned lion on the high plateau and to collect elephants for the group that Mr. Akeley is preparing for the American Museum of Natural History. The government gave him a special permit to collect such elephants as he would require, two cows, a calf, a young bull, and, if possible, two large bulls. One or more of these were to be killed by Colonel Roosevelt and one by myself. It seemed promising that the cows, calf, and young bull could be got on Mount Elgon, but the likelihood of getting the big bulls was far from encouraging. Lieutenant-Governor Jackson thought we might be successful if we directed our efforts to the southeastern slopes of the mountain and avoided the northeastern slopes along the River Turkwel, which had been hunted a good deal by sportsmen and poachers. If we were unable to get the big bulls on Elgon it might be necessary to make a special trip into Uganda for them. However, we determined to try, and try we did, through eight weeks of hard work and wonderful experiences in that remote district.

At Sergoi, the very outpost of crude civilization, we were warned not to go up the southern side of the mountain on account of the natives that live there. We were told that they were inclined to be troublesome. We met Captain Ashton and Captain Black coming out after six weeks on the northern slopes. They reported seeing big herds, but mostly cows and calves. At Sergoi we also received word from Colonel Roosevelt and at once marched to the Nzoia River, where we met him.

During our march we saw no elephants, but as we neared the river there were fresh signs of elephant along the trail. It is strikingly indicative of the "Roosevelt luck" that he saw, on the morning we met him, the only elephants that he had seen in the district, and that within twenty-four hours from that time he had killed three elephants and Kermit one. Of this number two cows killed by Colonel Roosevelt were satisfactory for the group, and also the calf killed by his son, Kermit. This left one young bull and two large bulls still to be secured, and to that end we addressed our efforts during the succeeding weeks.

For nine days we hunted the Nzoia River region, but without seeing an elephant. There were kongoni, zebra, topi, waterbuck, wart-hogs, reedbuck, oribi, eland, and Uganda cob, but scour the country as we would, we saw no sign of elephant except the broad trails in the grass and the countless evidences that they had been in the region some time before. The country was beautiful and wholesome. There was lots of game for our table, from the most delicious grouse to the oribi, whose meat is the tenderest I have ever eaten. There were ducks and geese and Kavirondo crane; and sometimes eland, as fine in flavor as that of the prize steer of the fat-stock show. Then there were reedbuck and cob, both of which are very good to eat. So our tins of camp pie and kippered herring and ox tongue remained unopened and we lived as we never had before.

When the day's hunt was over the sun in a splendid effort painted such sublime sunsets above Mount Elgon as I had never dreamed of. And the music of hundreds of African birds along the river's edge greeted us with the cool, delightful dawn. Purely from an æsthetic standpoint, our days on the Nzoia were ones never to be forgotten, while from the standpoint of the man who loves to see wild game and doesn't care much about killing it, the bright, clear days on the Nzoia were memorable ones. The Roosevelt party went its way back to civilization; the Spaniards, De la Huerta and the Duke of Peñaranda, came and made a flying trip up the mountain for elephant, then returned and went their way. The young Baron Rothschild came on to the plateau for a couple of weeks and then disappeared. And still we lingered on, happy, healthy, generally hungry, and intoxicated with the languorous murmur of Africa.

Then we marched for the mountain on our big elephant hunt. The details of those twelve days of adventuring in districts, some of which were probably never traversed before by white men, our experiences with the natives, our climb up the side of the mountain and our camp in the crater; our icy mornings, our ascent of the highest peak, and our explorations of the ancient homes of the cave-dwellers—all are part of a remarkable series of events that have nothing to do with an elephant story. In the forests we saw numberless old elephant pits, and on the grassy slopes there were mazes of elephants' trails, some so big that hundreds of elephants must have moved along them. But we saw no elephants. We scanned the hills for miles and tramped for days in ideal elephant country, but our quest was all in vain. Then our food supplies ran low, our last bullock was killed, and we hurried back to the base camp on the river, a hungry, tired band of a hundred and twenty men.

The matter of provisioning a large number of porters far from the railroad is a serious one. In addition to carrying the safari outfit, the porters must carry their posho, or cornmeal ration, and it is impossible for them to carry more than a limited number of days' rations. So the farther one gets from the base of supplies the more difficult it is to move, and a relay system must be employed. Porters must be sent back for food, often six or eight days; or else a bullock wagon must be used for that purpose. In our safari we used two wagons, drawn by thirty oxen, to supplement the porters in keeping up food supplies, and even by so doing there were times when rations ran low. In such times we would shoot game for them, either kongoni or zebra, both of which are considered great delicacies by the black man.

However, this is not telling about my memorable elephant experiences in the Guas Ngishu Plateau.

We got back to the Nzoia River on December third. On the fifteenth, after many more unsuccessful attempts to get in touch with a herd, Mr. Akeley and I resolved to try the mountain again. We thought that perhaps the elephants might have moved northward along the eastern slope, and so we thought we'd push clear up to the Turkwel River and find out beyond question. We outfitted for an eight days' march, carried only one tent and a small number of good porters. Only the absolute necessaries were taken, for we expected to move fast and hard. The first day we marched eight hours, crossed the Nzoia River, and by a curious chance at once struck a fresh trail which was diagnosed as being only a few hours old. The bark torn from trees was fresh and still moist; the leaves of the branches that had been broken off as the elephants fed along the way were still unwithered, and the flowers that had been crushed down by the great feet of the herd had lost little of their freshness and fragrance.

The trail led us first in one direction, then in another; sometimes it was a big trail that plowed through the long grass like a river, with little tributaries branching in and out where the individual members of the herd had swerved out of the main channel to feed by the way. And sometimes when all the herd were feeding, the main trail disappeared, to be replaced by a maze of lesser trails leading in all directions. But by the skilful tracking of our gunbearers the main trail would be found again some distance onward. We followed the trail for hours, and then, night coming on, we went into camp near a small stream, choked with luxuriant vegetation. Akeley thought he heard a faint squeal of an elephant far off, and while the porters made camp we went on for a mile or so to investigate. But no further sounds indicated the proximity of the herd.

Early the next morning we took up the trail again, and in less than an hour my Masai sais pointed off to a distant slope a couple of miles away, where a black line appeared. It looked like an outcropping of rock. Akeley looked at it and exclaimed, "By George, I believe he's got them!" and a moment later, after he had directed his glasses on the distant spot, he said briskly, "That's right, they're over there." And so, for the first time, after having scanned suspicious-looking spots in the landscape for weeks and always with disappointment, I saw a herd of real live elephants. To the naked eye they looked more like little shifting black beetles than anything else, but in the glasses they were plainly revealed with swaying bodies and flapping ears and swinging trunks.

In elephant hunting the first important thing to consider is the wind, for the elephant is very keen-scented and is quick to detect a breath of danger in the breeze. Fortunately we had seen them in time. If we had gone ahead a few hundred yards they would have got our wind and gone away in alarm, but this had not occurred. We could see that they were feeding quietly and without the slightest evidence of uneasiness.

We left our horses and the porters under a big tree and told the latter to come on if they heard any firing; otherwise, they were to await our return. Then, with only our gunbearers and a man carrying Akeley's large camera, we circled in a wide detour until we were safely behind the elephants. The wind continued favorable, and we cautiously approached the brow of a hill near where we had last seen them. They had disappeared, but their trail was as easy to follow as an open road. Before reaching the brow of the next hill one of the gunbearers was sent up a tree to reconnoiter the country beyond.

"Hapa," he whispered, as he carefully climbed down and indicated with his hand that they were near. Again we swung in a wide circle and came over the brow of the next hill. There, four or five hundred yards away, was the herd of elephants, standing idly under the low trees that studded the opposite slope. There were between forty and fifty of them, and from the number of totos, or calves, we assumed that many of the big ones were cows. We studied the herd for some minutes, estimating the ivory and trying in vain to pick out the bulls. There is very little difference between the appearance of a cow and a bull elephant when the latter has only moderate-sized tusks. Usually the tusks of the male are heavier and thicker, but except for this distinction there is very little noticeable difference between the two. Of course, an elephant with gigantic tusks is at once known to be a bull, but if he has small tusks it is a matter of considerable guesswork.

We could not tell which ones of this herd were bulls, but assumed that there must surely be several small-sized or young bulls among them. We decided to go nearer, knowing that the elephant's eyesight is very poor, and with such a favoring wind his sense of smell was useless. It seemed amazing that they did not see us as we walked up the slope toward them. When a couple of hundred yards away we climbed a tree to study them some more. They were in three separate groups, each of which was clustered sleepy and motionless under the trees. They had ceased feeding and had evidently laid up for their midday rest, although the hour was hardly ten in the morning.

From our "observation tower" in the tree we studied the three groups as well as we could. So far as we could judge there were at least three bulls of medium size, but as we looked those three lazily moved off toward the group on the extreme left. At that time we were within about a hundred yards of the nearest group with the wind still favorable, and except for one thing we might easily have crept up through the grass to within thirty or forty yards. Directly between us and the elephants were two kongoni, one lying down and the other alert and erect.

The kongoni is the policeman of the plains. He is the self-appointed guardian of all the other animals, and for some strange, unselfish reason, he always does sentinel duty for the others. His eyes are so keen that he sees your hat when you appear over the horizon two miles away, and from that moment he never loses sight of you. If you approach too near he whistles shrilly, and every other animal within several hundred yards is on the alert and apprehensive. The kongoni often risks his own life to warn other herds of animals of the approach of danger, and if I were going to write an animal story I'd use the kongoni as my hero. The hunters hate him for the trouble he gives them, but a fair-minded man can not help but recognize the heroic, self-sacrificing qualities of the big, awkward, vigilant antelope. Why these two sentinels had not seen us is still and always will be a mystery, but it is certain that they had not.

At the same time we knew that any attempt to approach nearer would alarm them and they in turn would sound the shrill tocsin of warning to the unsuspecting elephant herd, in which event we might have to track the elephants for miles until they settled down again. So we cautiously climbed down, retreated below the edge of the hill, and worked our way up in the lee of the group farthest to our left in the expectation of finding the three bulls. From tree to tree, and in the protection of large ant-hills, we moved forward until we were less than fifty yards from the elephants. Then we studied them again, but could not locate the bulls.

Probably at this time something may have occurred to make the elephants nervous. Perhaps the warning cry of a bird or the suspicious rustling of our footsteps in the tall grass, but at any rate the herd began to move slowly away. Two of the larger groups marched solemnly down the slope away from us and the other disappeared among the low scrub trees to our right. We followed the two larger groups and soon were again within a few yards of them. An ant-hill four or five feet high gave us some protection, and over the top of this we watched the enormous animals as they stood under the trees ahead of us. While watching these two large groups we forgot about the one that had disappeared to the right.

Suddenly one of the gunbearers whispered a warning and we turned to see this group only a few yards from us and bearing directly down toward the ant-hill where we crouched in the grass. They had not yet seen us, but it seemed a miracle that they did not. If one of us had moved in the slightest degree they would have charged into us with irresistible force. We held our guns and our breath while these big animals, by a most fortunate chance, passed by us to the windward of the ant-hill, not more than thirty feet away. If they had passed to the leeward side they would have got our wind and trouble would have been unavoidable. I took a surreptitious snap-shot of them after they had passed by, and for the first time in some minutes took a long breath.

Then we circled the herd again and came up to them. They were now thoroughly uneasy. They knew that some invisible hostile influence was abroad in the land, but they could not locate in which direction it lay. We saw the sensitive trunks feeling for the scent and saw the big ears moving uneasily back and forth. One large cow with a broken tusk was facing us, vaguely conscious that danger lay in that direction. And then, by some code of signals known only to the elephant world, the greater number of elephants moved off down the slope and up the opposite slope. Only the big, aggressive cow and four or five smaller animals remained behind as a rear-guard. She stood as she had stood for some moments, gazing directly at us and nervously waving her ears and trunk.

Akeley climbed to the top of an ant-hill and made some photographs showing the big cow and her companions in the foreground, while off on the neighboring hillside three distinct groups of elephants were in view. The latter were thoroughly alarmed and moved away very swiftly for some distance and then came to a pause. The big cow and her attendants then moved off, feeling that the retreat had been successfully effected. Once more we followed them and came up to them, and then once more we were flanked by a number of elephants that had previously disappeared over the hill. They had swung around and were returning directly toward where we stood, unsuspecting.

We barely had time to fall back to some small bushes, where we waited while the flanking party approached. They came almost toward us, and when only about fifty feet away I ventured a photograph, feeling that, if successful, it would be the closest picture ever made of a herd of wild elephants. I used a Verascope, a small stereoscopic French machine whose "click" is almost noiseless. The elephants advanced and we huddled together with rifles ready in the patch of bushes. It seemed a certainty that they would charge, and that if our bullets could not turn them we would be completely annihilated. But as yet there was no sign that they saw us, or, if they did, they could not distinguish our motionless forms from the foliage of the scrub.

At last, the foremost elephant, barely thirty feet from us, came to the trail in the grass by which we had retreated when we first saw them. The trunk, sweeping ahead of it as if feeling for the scent of danger, paused an instant as it reached the trail and then the animal drew back sharply as though stung. Then it whirled about and the herd went crashing away through the sparse undergrowth. It was a time of the utmost nervous tension, and I don't believe the human system could undergo a prolonged strain of that severity.

During all this time we had not succeeded in positively locating a bull elephant. Of all the forty-four elephants that were visible at any one time, there was not one that we could feel safe in identifying as the elephant needed for the group. Three more times we stalked the herd to very close range, but they were now so restless that nothing could be ascertained. So finally we decided to get ahead of them and watch them as they passed us, but just as we had reached a point where they were approaching, the two kongoni gave a shrill alarm and the entire herd made off in tremendous haste. Later, on our way back to camp, we came up with one group of six or seven, but they seemed too angry and aggressive to take needless chances with, so we watched them a while and then left them behind.

During all that day we were with the herd nearly five hours, five hours of intense nervous strain, during which time there was never a moment when we were not in some danger of discovery. But in spite of the aggressive bearing of some of them at one time or another, I had the feeling that the elephants would run away from us the instant they definitely determined where we were. And it was while laboring under this impression that I met my second Mount Elgon herd of elephants and learned by bitter experience that the impression was wholly false. But that is still another story, the story of being charged five times in one day by angry elephants, and how I killed a bull elephant for the Akeley group.

On the night of December the twenty-third I sat out in a boma watching for lions. None came and at the first crack of dawn my two gunbearers and I crawled out of the tangled mass of thorn branches, and prepared to return to camp two miles away. We were expecting my sais to arrive with my horse soon after daybreak, and while waiting for him to come, and for my gunbearers to get the blankets tied up, I went across to a neighboring swamp in the hope of getting a bushbuck. 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! I had only my little gun and my big double-barreled cordite was at the boma, three hundred yards away. Breathlessly I ran for it, fearing that the elephants might cut me off before I could reach it. There seemed to be from seven to ten of them, but they soon disappeared in the trees, going at a fast swinging walk. Hassan, my first gunbearer, stopped to slip a couple of solid shells in the gun while I ran to the top of a hill in the hope of catching sight of the herd. But they had disappeared entirely. We soon found the trail strongly marked in the dew-covered grass. My sais then appeared with my horse. He had seen two elephants and they had taken alarm at his scent and were rapidly fleeing. So I galloped back to camp to tell the rest of the party and to prepare for a systematic pursuit.

After breakfast, with Akeley, Stephenson, Clark and our gunbearers, the trail was again picked up where I had left it. It was then a little past nine and the elephants had two hours' start of us. Their trail indicated that they were moving fast and so we prepared for a long chase. For nearly two hours we followed, Akeley tracking with remarkable precision. Sometimes the trail was faint and merged with older trails, but by looking carefully the fresh trail was kept. Soon we began to see newly broken branches from the trees which indicated that the elephants were getting quieted down and were beginning to feed. It must have been about eleven o'clock when Stephenson saw the herd far across on another slope. There were two of the animals distinctly visible and another partly visible. They were resting under some of the many acacia trees that dappled the slope of the hill. We stopped to examine them with our glasses. One seemed to have no tusks, but we finally saw that it had very small ones. The other and larger one had one good tusk and one that was broken off. After about twenty minutes we left our horses and with only our gunbearers moved across toward them, thinking that there must be others that we had not yet seen. The wind was bad, sometimes sweeping up in our direction through the depression between the two slopes and a moment later coming from another direction. At one time the wind blew from us directly toward the elephants and we expected to see them take alarm and run away. But they did not. We circled around and approached them from a better direction and advanced to within a couple of hundred yards without being detected. We then stopped for a conference. If there was a young bull I was to kill it for the Akeley group; if there was a large bull Stephenson was to kill it for himself; if there were only cows we were not to shoot unless absolutely necessary. In this event, Akeley was to take his camera, and with "Fred," "Jimmy" Clark, and I as escorts with our double-barreled cordite rifles, was to advance until he could get a photograph that would show an elephant the full size of the plate. If the elephants charged we were to yell and try to turn them without shooting; if they came on we were to shoot to hurt, but not to kill.

Fred was on one side of "Ake," Jimmy on another, and I on Fred's left. Thus we slowly moved toward the elephants. A reedbuck was startled out of the grass and noisily ran away, giving the alarm. The elephants began feeling in the air with their trunks and their ears began to wave uneasily. Finally they turned and seemed about to go away. Then Fred saw, a short distance to the right, some more elephants that had previously been hidden by the trees. We both whispered to Ake to stop, but he either did not hear us on account of his heavy sun hat or else was too intent upon the elephants in front to heed.

"Ake," whispered Fred, "there's a good bull over there with good tusks. Wait a minute." But Ake, camera in position, continued to advance and so we followed. The elephants, a big cow and a half-grown one, were now facing us with ears wide spread. They looked very nasty. I thought they would turn and run away and was not uneasy about the outcome. But to my great surprise they started toward us, first slowly and then at a rapid trot, steadily gaining in swiftness. It was a real charge and we yelled to scare them off. The big cow was in the lead and she had not the slightest intention of being scared. Her one idea was to annihilate us. We raised our rifles and continued to yell, but on she rushed. She was only thirty yards away when Jimmy fired, Fred fired, and then I. The huge animal sank on her four knees and the half-grown one turned off and stopped, confused and angry. Akeley had got a splendid photograph of the charging cow and now he took one of the smaller beast before we approached the cow. Upon our advance the smaller one ran away but the big cow never moved again. She was stone dead. The three bullets had struck her, Jimmy's high as she was head on, Fred's between the eye and ear as she swung, and mine just behind the orifice of the ear as the head was still further swung by the shock of Fred's bullet. The elephant rested on her four knees in an upright position, quite lifelike in appearance. The small elephant ran off toward those that we had seen on our right. I suggested that we immediately follow the herd in the hope that a young bull might be found among them. So off we went and in a few moments we saw them to our right, apparently returning to where the cow had been killed. It is entirely likely that the big broken-tusked cow was going back to make trouble for us. Colonel Roosevelt had a similar experience with a bull elephant that returned and charged the hunters as they were standing about one that they had just killed.

As the elephants moved along slowly we paralleled them and studied them as well as we could. One was the big cow with the one broken and one good tusk. She was leading the group, and was doubtless a vicious animal. She was an enormous beast, probably over eleven feet in height. Another was the half-grown elephant, then a smaller one, and lastly a good-sized elephant with two fairly good tusks. We tried to determine the sex of this last one, I hoping that it was a bull, but fearing otherwise. Ake thought it was a cow with tusks about twelve or fourteen inches long, but the fact that its breasts showed no signs of milk fullness led me to hope that it was a young bull, and I determined to act on that supposition. I at once advanced with my big gun in readiness. The two largest elephants at the same moment whirled around and started swiftly toward us. I rested my gun against the side of a small tree and after their onward rush had brought them within fifty yards I fired as Ake suggested, "just between the eye and ear." The animal swerved but did not fall. Akeley and Stephenson fired at the big cow and under the shock of their heavy shells she dropped to her knees, then sprang up and came on again. Once more they shot and she again went down on her knees, but got up, shaking her head and turned a little to one side. Stephenson started to shoot her again, but Ake shouted, "Don't shoot her again. She's got enough." Mr. Stephenson followed her for some distance and decided that she was going to recover, and so came back. In the meantime my elephant, with the two smaller ones, was moving off to the left, and with my small rifle I fired at its backbone, the only vulnerable spot visible. A spurt of dust rose, but the elephant did not stop. So, accompanied by Hassan and Sulimani, my two gunbearers, I started after the wounded elephant and the two younger ones. The big one was moving slowly, as though badly wounded. The wind was bad, so we circled around to head them off and in doing so completely lost them. Presently we struck their trail and followed them by the blood-stains on the grass.

After some minutes we saw them moving along in the tall grass near the Nzoia River. Again we swiftly circled to head them off before they could cross the river, but when we reached a point where they had last been seen they had disappeared in the dense tangle of trees and high reeds that grew at the river's edge. We thought they would cross the river, so we rushed after them. Suddenly Hassan yelled "Here they come!" and, ahead of us, came the large elephant, its head rising from above the sea of grass like the bow of a battleship bearing rapidly down upon us. The two smaller ones were almost invisible, only the back of one appearing above the reeds. We were out in the open and the situation looked decidedly dangerous. I hastily drew a bead on the big one's forehead, fired, but it didn't stop. There was barely time for us to get out of the way. I ran sideways toward a little mound that furnished some protection, while Hassan, with a coolness and courage that I both admired and envied, stood still until the big elephant was within ten feet of him and then leaped to one side as the three beasts swept by him, carried onward by the impetus of their mad rush. As the big one passed it made a vicious swing at him with its trunk.

Fortunately the elephants continued in their course and we followed them with my big rifle again reloaded and ready. Once more they turned in toward the river and were completely swallowed up in the tall reeds. We again waded in after them and had gone only a few yards when we once more saw the angry head of the big one looming up as it came toward us. I fired point-blank at the base of the trunk and the beast stopped suddenly. Then it slowly turned and as it was about to disappear in the tall elephant grass again I fired at its backbone. The huge bulk collapsed and disappeared, buried in the reeds. Hassan yelled that it was dead, but we couldn't see for the grass. The situation now was perilous in the extreme. The river made a sharp bend at this point like an incomplete letter O, with a narrow neck of land through which the elephants had passed when I had shot. At the narrow neck it was about a hundred feet across while the depth of the "O" was about three hundred feet and the width about two hundred and fifty feet. This small peninsula was matted with a jungle growth of high grass and reeds six or eight feet tall, while the edges of the river were thickly wooded with small trees tangled together and interlacing their branches over the narrow but deep waters of the Nzoia.

Down in the jungle depths of this peninsula there was a violent commotion among the low branches of these trees, an indication that the animal was not dead, but was thrashing madly about as if desperately wounded. Hassan said it was the young elephant and that the older one was dead, but this could not be determined without pushing on through the reeds until we would be almost upon them. This course seemed too dangerous to try.

The river at this point was absolutely impassable for animals. The banks were ten feet high and perpendicular. The water was perhaps five or six feet deep and the width of the swift stream not over twenty or thirty feet. The trees had interlaced their roots and branches across the river and in the water. No animal, not a tree climber, could possibly cross the stream on account of the straight up and down banks.

So after a time we crept along through the grass at the edge of the stream until we reached a point probably forty yards from where the elephants doubtless were, although quite hidden from our view. There was still a tremendous threshing in the low branches of the trees and in order to see the animals we had to creep cautiously across the peninsula to a point about half-way, where a large, rotten, dead tree stood. This gave us cover and from its screen we could see the three elephants, only fifteen yards away. The head of the big one was still up and it was turned directly at us. It was so close and so big that the effect was terrifying.

"Mkubwa," whispered Sulimani, and that means "big." So the big elephant, instead of being dead, was still alive, with an impassable river at its feet on one side, a dense tangle of trees on two other sides, and with a narrow open aisle between it and ourselves. The two smaller elephants were at its side. To see to fire I had to step out from the tree and expose myself, and as I stepped out the wounded beast saw me and reared its head as if to make a final rush. I fired point-blank; it swung around and a second shot sent it down. Hassan grabbed my arm and told me to hurry back before the two smaller elephants charged. If they did so it might be necessary to shoot them, which we didn't want to do. So we ran swiftly back to the edge of the river and waited. But all was quiet, and after a time we climbed across the river on the interlacing branches, circled around to where the elephants were visible just across the stream and scared the two smaller ones away. Once more we swung across from branch to branch over the swift waters of the river and reached the other bank where lay the mountainous bulk of the dead elephant. It was a young bull about eight feet high and with two well-shaped tusks twenty-two inches long in the open, or approximately thirty-eight inches in all.

Sulimani was sent to notify Mr. Akeley and Mr. Clark, and after a long search found them, and together they arrived a couple of hours later, followed by gunbearers and saises. Mr. Stephenson had gone back to camp to see that salt and supplies, with one tent, were sent out.

Then began the work of measuring the elephant, a work that must be done most thoroughly when the trophy is to be mounted entire. There were dozens of measurements of every part of the body, enough to make a dress for a woman, and then came the skinning, a prodigious task that took all of the late afternoon and evening. We investigated the position of an elephant's heart which Kermit Roosevelt had said was up in the upper third or at the top of the second third of the body, a spot which must be reached by a shot directed through the point of the ear as it lay back. As a matter of fact, an elephant's heart lies against the brisket, about ten or eleven inches from the bottom of the breast. A broadside shot through the front leg at the elbow would penetrate the heart.

At nine o'clock, Christmas Eve, the tent arrived and was soon put up in the jungle of high grass at the middle of the little peninsula. A more African scene can not be imagined. The porter's fires, over each of which sticks spitted with elephant meat en brochette were cooking, imparted a weird look to the river jungle grass and spectral trees.

At ten o'clock we had our dinner and at eleven we put on our pajamas and with the camp-fire burning before the tent and the armed askaris pacing back and forth, gave ourselves up to lazy talk, then meditation and then sound sleep.

It was a wonderful day—one always to be remembered.

The next day, Christmas, came without the usual customs of Christmas morn. In the forenoon we stuck with the bull elephant, getting its skin and bones ready for transportation back to camp; and in the afternoon came the work of saving the skull and part of the skin of the cow elephant. The porters must have thought the day a wonderful one, for they ate and gorged on elephant meat until they could hardly move.