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.

[Drawing: _It Looked Like the Rear Elevation of a Barn_]

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 stra