e to mark down dead birds; if it
had been taught to point and retrieve, it would have been even more
useful.

[Illustration]

The walking was very tiring, one leg on firm ground and the other up to
the top of the thigh in mud and water for one second, and vice versa the
next; and the trees kept any breeze there was off the jheel, so we
streamed from the tops of our heads. I don't think I ever in my life
felt so hot when shooting--or a bottle of lager at lunch so
delicious!--even the rough native cheroot came in as a pure joy!

The elephant stood beside us as we lunched, under the trees, flapping
its ears in the shade, and occasionally adding a branch of a tree to its
morning meal. The sunlight and patches of shadow on its grey skin made
its great bulk blend into the background of stems and deep shadows, so
that I understood what hunters say about the difficulty of seeing them
in heavy jungle: it was as hard to see as an elk in pines. I wondered
why it did not join its wild companions in the neighbourhood; for it was
once wild, and there was nothing to prevent it going off if it pleased.

After lunch we decided to try for duck; that turned out a failure, but
not for anything would I have missed the experience of wandering through
jungle, where, without an elephant, we could not have moved. I am glad I
am not yet very keen about orchids, or how my teeth would have watered!
for they clothed the branches above us; they seemed generally to grow on
branches about twenty or thirty feet from the ground, towards the light
and air; some trees were literally covered with them at that height.

Our men we had to leave behind, as there was no track, and the Burman
guide climbed up the crupper beside us, and we wandered away to some
pools he knew, where there might be duck. I think we dozed a little--it
was so hot and silent in the forest. There was a feeling of being lost,
for there were no landmarks in the interminable beauty of tall trees and
undergrowth. It was a puzzle for the mahout and elephant to find
openings wide enough to take us and the side boxes on the pad through
the tangle. Often a wrong direction was taken, and a circuit had to be
made to get round a tree, a mass of creepers, or a deep pool. Both the
Burman and the elephant seemed to calculate, to a hair's breadth, the
height and width of all it carried. I think the corner of one box only
once touched a branch, and when we lay low no branches touched our
heads; e