HUNTING THE AFRICAN BUFFALO 83 
paid no more attention to me than if I had been an 
antelope. But after I had shot one or two as speci- 
mens, they acquired the traditional elephant atti- 
tude. I had a curiously similar experience with buf- 
faloes. 
It happened in this way. Mrs. Akeley, Cun- 
inghame, the famous hunter, and I had been trying 
for some time, but with little luck, to get buffalo 
specimens for a group for the Field Museum at 
Chicago. 
We had reason to believe that there was a herd of 
buffaloes living in the triangle made by the junction 
of the Theba and Tana rivers. As the buffaloes 
would have to water from one stream or the other, 
we felt pretty sure of locating them by following down 
the Theba to the junction and then up the Tana. 
From the swamp down the Theba to its junction 
with the Tana occupied three days in which we saw 
no fresh signs of buffalo. On the second march up 
the Tana, as I was travelling ahead of the safari at 
about midday, looking out through an opening in 
a strip of thorn bush that bordered the river, I saw 
in the distance a great black mass on the open plain 
which, on further investigation with the field glasses, 
I was reasonably certain was a herd of buffaloes. 
Sending a note back to Cuninghame, who was in 
charge of the safari, suggesting that he make camp 
at a hill on the banks of the Tana about two miles 
ahead of my position and await me there, I started 
off over the plain with my two gun boys. Coming up 
out of a dry stream-bed that I had used to conceal 
