BACK TO AFRICA. 153 



anxious to see was how they would attract the game 

 away from his herd, and draw him into the trap. We 

 were fully sixty leagues from the coast, and all around 

 us stretched an unbroken forest, where both good feed- 

 ing-places and cool shadows, which the elephant loves, 

 promised plenty of sport. Thursday felt confident that 

 the very herd from which he had obtained ivory a year 

 or more before would still have remained in sncli 

 a favorable locality, Avhere there was everything to 

 tempt them to a long stay. That night we camped 

 on the edge of the forest, and were careful to make 

 as little noise as possible, and even went without a 

 fire for cooking, to avoid any smoke that might warn 

 the herd of our approach. We supped on maize and 

 cassava cakes, made the day before by Thursday's wife, 

 and on canned sardines, which I shared with my men, 

 to their intense delight. Indeed, there is no surer pass- 

 port to the hearts or greed of the blacks tlian a tin box 

 of these oily fish, and they have often stood me in good 

 stead among unfriendly natives. 



If we had been scented b}^ the elephants, they would 

 either have attacked us or left the country for several 

 days ; for although they fear neither animal nor man, 

 still, the latter has an entirely different effect on them 

 from the most savage of the former. When, for in- 

 stance, he suspects the presence of his deadly foe, the 

 rhinoceros, he shakes with rage, and hastens to meet 

 the enemy in a combat from which he almost always 



