MAULED BY AN ELEPHANT 91 



"Elephants may look slow and clumsy in 

 captivity, but when they are walking at an 

 ordinary gait a person must step along at 

 almost a dog-trot in order to overhaul them. 

 It was about ten o'clock when we took the 

 * spoor ' * and we knew that we were starting on 

 a journey of at least twenty miles. The trail 

 was not hard to keep, for a herd of twenty 

 elephants following single file through the ten- 

 foot elephant-grass makes more than a well- 

 worn path. 



"As they marched along they had amused 

 themselves by snatching a bunch of grass and 

 tossing it aside; then, as they had passed through 

 a grove of thorn-trees, they had broken off 

 limbs and dragged them a hundred yards or 

 more before dropping them. Several times one 

 had halted long enough to dig a hole in the 

 ground three or four feet in diameter with his 

 tusks, and then we saw where he had galloped 

 on to overtake his comrades. Once they gave 

 us an advantage by stopping for some time to 

 wallow in a water-hole, and as they emerged 

 they rubbed their bodies against the first trees 

 they passed, leaving the mud plastered ten feet 



* A sign of any kind. 



