ELEPHANT HUNTING 317 



beneath. Here we left our horses and went forward on 

 foot, crossing a palm-fringed stream in a little valley. From 

 the next rise we saw the backs of the elephants as they 

 stood in a slight valley, where the rank grass grew ten or 

 twelve feet high. It was some time before we could see the 

 ivory so as to be sure of exactly what we were shooting. 

 Then the biggest cow began to move slowly forward, and 

 we walked nearly parallel to her, along an elephant trail, 

 until from a slight knoll I got a clear view of her at a dis- 

 tance of eighty yards. As she walked leisurely along, almost 

 broadside to me, I fired the right barrel of the Holland 

 into her head, knocking her flat down with the shock; and 

 when she rose I put a bullet from the left barrel through 

 her heart, again knocking her completely off her feet; 

 and this time she fell permanently. She was a very old 

 cow, and her ivory was rather better than in the average 

 of her sex in this neighborhood, the tusks weighing about 

 eighteen pounds apiece. She had been ravaging the sham- 

 bas overnight which accounted in part for the natives 

 being so eager to show her to me and in addition to leaves 

 and grass, her stomach contained quantities of beans. 

 There was a young one just out of calfhood, and quite 

 able to take care of itself with her; it ran off as soon as 

 the mother fell. 



Early next morning Cuninghame and Heller shifted 

 part of the safari to the stream near where the dead ele- 

 phant lay, intending to spend the following three days in 

 taking off and preparing the skin. Meanwhile Tarlton, 

 Kermit, and I were to try our luck in a short hunt on the 

 other side of Meru boma, at a little crater lake called Lake 

 Ingouga. We could not get an early start, and reached 

 Meru too late to push on to the lake the same day. 



The following morning we marched to the lake in two 

 hours and a half. We spent an hour in crossing a broad 

 tongue of woodland that stretched down from the wonder- 

 ful mountain forest lying higher on the slopes. The trail 

 was blind in many places because elephant paths of every 



