The American Museum Journal 



Vol. XII FEBRUARY, 1912 No. 2 



ELEPHANT HUNTING IN EQUATORIAL AFRICA 



With photographs by the Author 



Bi/ Carl E. Akrinj 



ONE evening in I'ganda when rather di.scourage(l after a day of 

 unsuccessful effort to locate elephants, we suddenly heard the 

 squeal of an elephant far to the east. The scjuealing and trumpet- 

 ing increased in frequency and distinctness until in an hour's time we 

 realized that a large herd was drifting slowly in our direction. By eleven 

 o'clock they had come very close, some within two hundred yards of camp, 

 and on three sides of us. The crashing of trees and the squealing and 

 trumpeting as the elephants fed, (juarreling over choice morsels, resulted 

 in a din such as we had never before heard from elephants. 



Our men kept innumerable fires going for fear that the elephants might 

 take a notion to raid the plantain gro^'e in w^hich we were camped, and at 

 daylight I was off for the day's hunt. The herd had drifted down to the 

 forest side, forty minutes from camp, in fact many of them had entered 

 the forest. For a couple of miles we traveled through a scene of devasta- 

 tion such as a cyclone leaves in its wake: eight-foot grass trampled flat 

 except for here and there an "island" that had been spared; half of the 

 scattering trees twisted off and stripped of bark, and of all branches and 

 leaves. 



We approached within a few hundred yards of the forest, where the grass 

 was undisturbed except for trails showing how the elephants at daybreak 

 had trekked through in small bands, single file. When about to cross a 

 little wooded gulley, we thought it wise to stop and look over the situation. 

 From the top of a mass of rocks, we discovered a cow feeding only twenty 

 yards away and others all about in the high grass between us and the timber. 

 There was clear passage to a rocky elevation one hundred yards to the left, 

 for which we made, and while standing there, seventy-five feet above the 

 level, I received an impression of Africa that must remain with me to the last. 



There was not a breath of wind, and the forest, glistening in the morning 

 sunlight, stretched away for miles to the east and to the west and up the 

 slope to the north. Here and there in the high grass that intervened 

 betMeen our perch and the forest edge, three hundred yards away, were 

 scattered elephants singly and in groups feeding and loafing along, to be 

 swallowed by the dark shadows of the dense forest side. From the gulley 

 which I had started to cross a little time before, there stalked twenty-five 



43 



