HUNTING ELEPHANT AND RIDING LION 165 
does a stern chase after a band of travelling elephants. 
When and where they are are likely to stop no one can tell. 
The only thing to do is to follow on, sleep on the trail and 
follow on again. Many of course will not give themselves 
this trouble, and let a travelling herd go, taking their 
chances of coming on other bands which are feeding. I 
should not advise anyone to take up the chase unless he 
is in fair condition, and a night under the stars has no 
terrors for him. To go six or seven hours, hard as your 
men can walk and run, and your mule or pony trot or canter, 
and then to turn back, is a very wearying business. Let 
them go, and trust to luck and another chance, or follow 
on till you get your shot, or the herd gains some covert 
where they are safe from pursuit. 
Though we were not destined to get elephant this time, 
it seemed a good augury for our future to meet them so soon, 
and, indeed, this day auspiciously begun was to prove 
a red-letter day on our calendar. We had made ten or 
twelve miles of the eighteen that separated us from our 
camping ground, at the clear spring that rises two miles 
beyond Sergoit, when H. suggested to me that we 
might leave the sefari and explore an exceedingly likely 
bit of country, through which in the rains a water course 
trickled, one of those broad, shallow depressions in the 
plain that are common in East Africa, its bottom dotted 
with small rushy hollows where water lay occasionally, 
its sides sometimes rocky, often sloping smoothly up to 
the level — an ideal place for lion. 
We followed the windings of this open donga for several 
miles and saw great quantities of game. The nature of 
the country enabled us often to get quite close before we 
were seen. Oraby, topy, eland, warthog, scattered before 
us, but we wanted lion and let them alone. It was a 
charming ride, and over a country that must soon pass into 
the settlers’ hands. The soil and climate are too good, 
