THE WAYS OF THE ELEPHANT 73 



very well acquainted while on the Mount Kenia 

 trip was not a professional elephant hunter, nev- 

 ertheless he had killed several elephants on Kili- 

 manjaro. Once by mistake he shot and wounded 

 a cow elephant that ran some distance before 

 falling. On overtaking her he found that she 

 had fallen in a kneeling position. A little calf 

 was pinned under her knee by a leg that was 

 driven deep into the soft earth. A close exami- 

 nation of the route over which the old elephant 

 had passed failed to reveal any of the little one's 

 tracks. This, together with the fact that the 

 calf was not hitherto seen and the peculiar man- 

 ner in which it lay, might be taken as proof that 

 the mother was carrying it in her trunk or per- 

 haps resting it on her tusks, with her trunk 

 holding it in position. 



Certainly a baby elephant cannot keep up 

 with its mother when escaping from danger, and 

 it is reasonable to suppose that an animal which 

 makes a specialty of carrying things in its trunk 

 and is intelligent enough to push down trees ten 

 inches in diameter and shove logs and stones 

 out of its path might, under certain circum- 

 stances, have the sense to carry off its young. 



We were astonished to find elephants roaming 



