260 ELEPHANT-HUNTING [ch. x 



As she walked leisurely along, almost broadside to me, 

 I fired the right barrel of the Holland into her head, 

 knocking her flat down with the shock, and when she 

 rose I put a bullet from the left barrel through her 

 heart, again knocking her completely off her feet, and 

 this time she fell permanently. She was a very old 

 cow, and her ivory was rather better than in the average 

 of her sex in this neighbourhood, the tusks weighing 

 about eighteen pounds apiece. She had been ravaging 

 the shambas overnight — which accounted in part for 

 the natives being so eager to show her to me — and in 

 addition to leaves and grass, her stomach contained 

 quantities of beans. There was a young one — ^just out 

 of calfhood, and quite able to take care of itself — with 

 her ; it ran off as soon as the mother fell. 



Early next morning Cuninghame and Heller shifted 

 part of the safari to the stream near where the dead 

 elephant lay, intending to spend the following three 

 days in taking off and preparing the skin. Meanwhile 

 Tarlton, Kermit, and I were to try our luck in a short 

 hunt on the other side of Meru Boma, at a little crater 

 lake called Lake Ingouga. We could not get an early 

 start, and reached JNIeru too late to push on to the lake 

 the same day. 



The following morning we marched to the lake in 

 two hours and a half. We spent an hour in crossing a 

 broad tongue of woodland that stretched down from the 

 wonderful mountain forest lying higher on the slopes. 

 The trail was blind in many places because elephant 

 paths of every age continually led along and across it, 

 some of them being much better marked than the trail 

 itself as it twisted through the sun-flecked shadows 

 underneath the great trees. Then we came out on high 

 downs, covered with tall grass and littered with volcanic 



