ELEPHANT HUNTING 311 



Both firing, they killed him before he had gone many yards. 

 He was a bull, with a thirty-inch horn. 



By this time Cuninghame and Heller had finished the 

 skin and skeleton of the bull they were preserving. Near 

 the carcass Heller trapped an old male leopard, a savage 

 beast; its skin was in fine shape, but it was not fat, and 

 weighed just one hundred pounds. Now we all joined, 

 and shifted camp to a point eight or nine miles distant 

 from Meru boma, and fifteen hundred feet lower among the 

 foot-hills. It was much hotter at this lower level; palms 

 were among the trees that bordered the streams. On the 

 day we shifted camp Tarlton and I rode in advance to 

 look for elephants, followed by our gun-bearers and half a 

 dozen wild Meru hunters, each carrying a spear or a bow 

 and arrows. When we reached the hunting grounds, open 

 country with groves of trees and patches of jungle, the 

 Meru went off in every direction to find elephant. We 

 waited their return under a tree, by a big stretch of culti- 

 vated ground. The region was well peopled, and all the 

 way down the path had led between fields, which the Meru 

 women were tilling with their adze-like hoes, and banana 

 plantations, where among the bananas other trees had 

 been planted, and the yam vines trained up their trunks. 

 These cool, shady banana plantations, fenced in with tall 

 hedges and bordered by rapid brooks, were really very 

 attractive. Among them were scattered villages of conical 

 thatched huts, and level places plastered with cow dung 

 on which the grain was threshed; it was then stored in huts 

 raised on posts. There were herds of cattle, and flocks of 

 sheep and goats; and among the burdens the women 

 bore we often saw huge bottles of milk. In the shambas 

 there were platforms, and sometimes regular thatched huts, 

 placed in the trees; these were for the watchers, who 

 were to keep the elephants out of the shambas at night. 

 Some of the natives wore girdles of banana leaves, looking, 

 as Kermit said, much like the pictures of savages in Sun- 

 dav-school books. 



