nge 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.

CHAPTER XI

NINE DAYS WITHOUT SEEING AN ELEPHANT. THE ROOSEVELT PARTY DEPARTS AND WE
MARCH FOR THE MOUNTAINS ON OUR BIG ELEPHANT HUNT. THE POLICEMAN OF THE
PLAINS

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