ELEPHANT FRIENDS AND FOES ~ 25 
realized my presence the’ rumbling ceased, as it al- 
ways does when they are suspicious, and she left the 
clump of growth she was in without my hearing a 
sound. 
But going back to the big herd. From the time I 
had seen the first elephant until the last of them 
disappeared in the forest it had been perhaps fifteen 
minutes—fifteen minutes in which to see the sight of 
a lifetime, a thing to go to Africa a dozen times to 
get one glimpse of. But what did I learn about the 
habits of the elephant in that fifteen minutes? A 
little perhaps but not much. It takes a long time and 
much patience to get at all intimate with old Tembo, 
as the Swahilis call him, on his native soil. 
After the herd disappeared in the forest I watched 
for ten or fifteen minutes and heard the squeal of the 
elephants and the noise of the monkeys again. Their 
suspicions were over. I followed into the forest 
where the trails showed me that they had broken up 
into small bands. I followed along on the trail of 
one of these bands until I got a glimpse of an elephant 
about fifty yards ahead of me in the trail. You 
don’t see a whole elephant in the forest. What you 
do see is just a glimpse of hide or tusk or trunk 
through the trees. And if you want to get this 
glimpse without disturbing him you must do your 
glimpsing from down the wind. 
There was a little open space ahead of the group I 
was following. J worked around until I got to a 
place where I could see them as they passed through 
this open space. They were moving along slowly, 
