ELEPHANT FRIENDS AND FOES 4; 
of elephants I was then working on for the African 
Hall in the American Museum of Natural History. 
I started out with four days’ rations, gun boys, porters, 
camera men, and so forth—fifteen men in all. The 
second day out brought me to about nine thousand 
feet above sea level where the bamboo began. Fol- 
lowing a well-worn elephant trail in search of this 
photographic material, I ran on to a trail of three old 
bulls. The tracks were old—probably as much as 
_ four days—but the size was so unusual that I decided 
to postpone the photography and follow them. I 
did not expect to have to catch up their four days’ 
travel, for I hoped that they would be feeding in 
the neighbourhood and that the trail I was on would 
cross a fresher trail made in their wanderings around 
for food. I had run upon their tracks first about 
noon. I followed until dark without finding any 
fresher signs. The next morning we started out at 
daybreak and finally entered an opening such as 
elephants use as a feeding ground. It is their custom 
to mill around in these openings, eating the vegeta- 
tion and trampling it down until it offers little more, 
and then move on. In six months or so it will be 
grown up again eight or ten feet high and they are 
very apt to revisit it and go through the same proc- 
ess again. Soon after we entered this opening I 
came suddenly upon fresh tracks of the elephants I 
had been following. Not only were the tracks fresh 
but the droppings were still steaming and I knew that 
the animals were not far away; certainly they had 
been there not more than an hour before. I followed 
