4 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER CH. i 



heedlessness of the wild. It calls and calls. And 

 oh, the glorious sunshine how it steeps right 

 into the very soul ! At times you fervently 

 hate it, for you recall baked lips, and a tongue 

 clinging with thirst to the roof of your mouth, 

 but return to England in the winter and you will 

 discover how intimately the visual aspect of a 

 country, bathed in brilliant sunshine, has played 

 upon those hidden strings of the mind that go to 

 form what is called cheerfulness. Ugh ! the 

 bleakness of a December day ! 



' Dembo, bwana!'. (Elephant, master!) What 

 a thrill these words send through a hunter! 

 One of my trackers has come upon the fresh 

 spoor of elephants. We examine their tracks 

 and can tell by the size of the foot-prints 

 whether they have been made by male or 

 female, and by the freshness of the impressions, 

 the approximate time that has elapsed since 

 they passed. The presence of strewn leaves 

 and broken branches and their condition indicate 

 when they fed, and whether they are meander- 

 ing, or moving steadily ahead for some fixed 

 goal for elephants know the country quite as 

 intimately as its human inhabitants. They are 

 obliged to know it : on their knowledge of 

 feeding-grounds, water-holes, and dense cover, 

 their lives depend. 



