THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS 



destructive of the skins. On the other hand, a man 

 could not, save by sheer good fortune, rely on stalk- 

 ing near enough to use a shotgun. Therefore we 

 evolved a method productive of the maximum noise, 

 row, barked shins, thorn wounds, tumbles, bruises 

 — and colobusl It was very simple. We took 

 about twenty boys into the jungle with us, and as 

 soon as we caught sight of a colobus we chased him 

 madly. That was all there was to it. 



And yet this method, simple apparently to the 

 point of imbecility, had considerable logic back of it 

 after all; for after a time somebody managed to get 

 underneath that colobus w^hen he was at the top of a 

 tree. Then the beast would hide. 



Consider then a tumbling riotous mob careering 

 through the jungle as fast as the jungle would let it, 

 slipping, stumbling, falling flat, getting tangled 

 hopelessly, disentangling with profane remarks, 

 falling behind and catching up again, everybody 

 yelling and shrieking. Ahead of us we caught 

 glimpses of the sleek bounding black and white 

 creature, running up the long slanting limbs, and 

 dropping like a plummet into the lower branches of 

 the next tree. We white men never could keep up 

 with the best of our men at this sort of work, although 

 in the open country I could hold them well enough. 

 We could see them dashing through the thick cover 



276 



