248 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



Then we struck into the great forest, and in an instant 

 the sun was shut from sight by the thick screen of wet 

 foliage. It was a riot of twisted vines, interlacing the trees 

 and bushes. Only the elephant paths, which, of every age, 

 crossed and recrossed it hither and thither, made it passable. 

 One of the chief difficulties in hunting elephants in the 

 forest is that it is impossible to travel, except very slowly 

 and with much noise, off these trails, so that it is some- 

 times very difficult to take advantage of the wind; and 

 although the sight of the elephant is dull, both its sense 

 of hearing and its sense of smell are exceedingly acute. 



Hour after hour we worked our way onward through 

 tangled forest and matted jungle. There was little sign 

 of bird or animal life. A troop of long-haired black and 

 white monkeys bounded away among the tree tops. Here 

 and there brilliant flowers lightened the gloom. We 

 ducked under vines and climbed over fallen timber. Poison- 

 ous nettles stung our hands. We were drenched by the 

 wet boughs which we brushed aside. Mosses and ferns 

 grew rank and close. The trees were of strange kinds. 

 There were huge trees with little leaves, and small trees 

 with big leaves. There were trees with bare, fleshy limbs, 

 that writhed out through the neighboring branches, bear- 

 ing sparse clusters of large frondage. In places the forest 

 was low, the trees thirty or forty feet high, the bushes that 

 choked the ground between, fifteen or twenty feet high. In 

 other places mighty monarchs of the wood, straight and 

 tall, towered aloft to an immense height; among them were 

 trees whose smooth, round boles were spotted like syca- 

 mores, while far above our heads their gracefully spread- 

 ing branches were hung with vines like mistletoe and draped 



