224 THROUGH UNKNOWN AFRICAN COUNTRIES. 
the two elephants we had wounded yesterday. We fol- 
lowed the tracks many miles, and finally found the second 
one I had shot lying dead near the river; but we never saw 
again the elephant that had received such a bombardment 
from rifles of all descriptions. The elephants about these 
countries are apt to wander long distances, from Lake 
Rudolf to the Amara, and again far up north to Curague, 
so that one cannot depend upon finding them in the same 
spot two weeks in succession. 
We moved camp a little farther up the valley, and then 
spent ten days waiting for the Amara to let me have 
porters for my proposed side trip to Lake Abaya. There 
were many birds and other natural-history specimens 
about the Galana that we had not seen before, so that 
Dodson and I employed our time to the best advantage in 
collecting, and I was also able to get a good rate for my 
chronometers. It rained every afternoon about four o'clock, 
and the sun was obscured by clouds at midday, so that I had 
to make my observations from the early morning stars. 
The work of collecting natural-history specimens was 
always a delight to me. As I had undertaken this journey 
purely for scientific purposes, I enjoyed shooting with my 
collecting-gun some tiny bird, if it was new to my col- 
lection, more than bringing down the biggest elephant. 
But the work of mapping out the country, although I 
regarded it as the most important undertaking I had 
assigned to myself, was always a great labor. Night and 
day I was obliged to work, whenever I was stopping for two 
or three days in one place, to rate my chronometers. On 
the march, whenever it could be managed, I took bearings 
with a prismatic compass of the different hills and moun- 
tains, and then after camp was reached I had to work out 
the observations of the preceding day, and take a new set 
of observations with my sextant or theodolite. No one, 
