22 IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA 
find them. The comparatively few men who have 
tried to study the elephant have not gained as much 
knowledge as one would imagine, because without 
trying it one cannot realize how extremely difficult 
it is to study the live African elephant. 
For example, as I said before, I spent a day with 
seven hundred elephants in the Budongo Forest, but 
although I heard them all the time and was very 
acutely conscious that they were near me, I do not 
believe that I actually had my eyes on an elephant 
more than half an hour, all told, during the day. It 
happened this way. 
One night about dark, after a week or two of hunt- 
ing, we heard the squeal of an elephant while we were 
sitting at dinner. A little later there were more 
squeals and occasional trumpeting—more and more, 
clearer and clearer—and by the time we had finished 
dinner the noise was only a mile or so away. It was 
a continuous row which suggested a tremendous herd. 
We went to bed early with elephants getting closer 
to camp all of the time. There is little danger of 
elephants attacking a camp, and, as there is no way 
to study them at night, about the only thing left to 
do was to go to bed and get in good shape for the next 
day. Along about midnight Mrs. Akeley came over 
to my tent and said that she had loaded my guns and 
that they were all ready. She could not sleep; so 
she went out to sit by the fire. The elephants were 
then within a hundred yards of our tents and there 
was a continuous roar made up of trumpetings, 
squealing, and the crashing of bushes and trees. 
