ELEPHANTS 167 



immediately to the north of Lake Albert Edward 

 is a game reserve, and, at the time when we were 

 there, It was the haunt of great herds of antelopes 

 and elephants. From our camp upon a hill a few 

 miles frorn the lake, we saw one day a herd of 

 forty or fifty elephants marching abreast in a long 

 line across the plain towards the lake. I followed 

 as quickly as possible along the broad road that 

 they had made — it looked as if fifty steam-rollers 

 had been over the ground — and tracked them to 

 a belt of trees growing in a swamp near the lake- 

 shore. I climbed up into one of the trees to leeward 

 of the herd, and found myself within fifty or sixty 

 yards of the elephants, which were all packed 

 together within a space hardly bigger than a lawn- 

 tennis court. For a moment it looked like a mass 

 of black rocks with something loose waving about 

 over it ; then it became possible to identify the 

 backs of the monsters, and to see their enormous 

 ears slowly flapping backwards and forwards. Some- 

 times one would lift up his trunk and scour his back 

 with a huge jet of mud and water, and sometimes 

 one on the outside of the herd would twist off a 

 branch from a tree and trample upon it. Once I 

 caught a glimpse of a young one playfully butting 

 its parent in the ribs, and being sternly rebuked 

 with a dig of a long tusk. It might be supposed 

 that one could hardly fail to see an elephant at 

 a distance of less than forty yards, but I had been 

 there for some time before I noticed a solitary old 



