Lake Victoria to Khartoum 



the wet they will be allowed to curl themselves 

 up on the floor of my tent afterwards. 



All of a sudden, amidst the howling of the gale, 

 one of them said, " Tembo ! " (elephant). I said, 

 " Rot ! Mind your own job ! " Sure enough, 

 when the storm had abated — as suddenly as it 

 began — we heard the trumpeting of a herd in the 

 distance. This was splendid, as we had evidently 

 stumbled quite by chance upon their favourite 

 watering-place. 



Next morning out went the scouts, and close 

 by came across elephant tracks, one of them 

 apparently that of a goodish bull. A bull's tracks 

 are very much bigger and longer than a cow's, 

 and it is said the more crinkles there are on his feet 

 the older he is. These crinkles, which are large 

 warts, are very clearly defined in dust, as, when 

 he lifts his feet from the ground, the suction of 

 the air makes little ridges of the dust round the 

 edge of these warts. 



Well, off we went ; but it was evident, after 

 some hours, that they were off too. Perhaps they 

 had seen our camp fires ; anyhow, they meant 

 moving, as all along their tracks were no signs, in 

 the shape of tell-tale broken trees and bushes pulled 

 down, of their having fed. There was very little 

 dung either, as would be the case if they had 

 gone quietly along. These are some of the signs 

 one learns by degrees to read when tracking 

 game in the jungle. But our failure to overtake 



2§4 



