22 THE KING'S MAHOUT 



taking and wide survey of the country within a 

 five-mile radius. The camp and the scouts were 

 kept some distance from where the elephants had 

 been located, and withdrew from their immediate 

 neighborhood so fast as others were discovered— 

 because the elephant, being mostly nocturnal and 

 hence with its senses of smell and touch very 

 acutely developed to enable it to distinguish the 

 various kinds of trees and shrubs upon which it 

 feeds, would be warned by the man scent and move 

 off. For that reason our advance party, through 

 all the manoeuvres of locating the elephants, be- 

 came a thin brown line of scouts. It was not so 

 difficult to find the elephants, moving casually in 

 herds of varying sizes up hill and down, for they 

 are very noisy and destructive; the difficulty was 

 to escape detection, which in this preliminary sur- 

 vey might result in frightening them away. 



Working in this way the scouts had within ten 

 days located one fairly sized herd and two smaller 

 ones, besides some scattered, making altogether 

 about two hundred and forty. And this successful 

 and rather speedy result was not to be credited 

 entirely to their efforts on the present hunt; a 

 large share being due the system in vogue. These 

 men are more or less in touch with the elephants 

 most of the time ; in fact, in a measure they are to 

 the elephant haunts what the cowboys are to the 



