CHAPTER II 
ELEPHANT FRIENDS AND FOES 
herd a quarter of a mile from a native village in 
Uganda in a last desperate effort to inspect the 
two hundred and fifty elephants which had been 
chevying me about so fast that I had not had a chance 
to see whether there were any desirable specimens 
among them or not. [have spent a day and a night in 
the Budongo Forest in the middle of a herd of seven 
hundred elephants. I have stood on an ant-hill 
awaiting the rush of eleven elephants which had got 
my wind and were determined to get me. I have 
spent a day following and fighting an old bull which 
took twenty-five shots of our elephant rifles before 
he succumbed. And once also I had such close 
contact with an old bull up on the slopes of Mt. 
Kenia that I had to save myself from being gored by 
grabbing his tusks with my hands and swinging in 
between them. 
I have spent many months studying elephants in 
Africa—on the plains, in the forests, in the bamboo, 
up on the mountains. I have watched them in herds 
and singly, studied their paths, their feeding grounds, 
everything about them I could, and I have come to the 
conclusion that of all the wild animals on this earth 
20 
| HAVE sat in the top of a tree in the middle of a 
