188 IN AFRICA 



dwellers all are part of a remarkable series of 

 events that have nothing to do with an elephant 

 story. In the forests we saw numberless old ele- 

 phant pits, and on the grassy slopes there were 

 mazes of elephants' trails, some so big that hun- 

 dreds of elephants must have moved along them. 

 But we saw no elephants. We scanned the hills for 

 miles and tramped for days in ideal elephant 

 country, but our quest was all in vain. Then our 

 food supplies ran low, our last bullock was killed, 

 and we hurried back to the base camp on the river, 

 a hungry, tired band of a hundred and twenty men. 



The matter of provisioning a large number of 

 porters far from the railroad is a serious one. In 

 addition to carrying the safari outfit, the porters 

 must carry their posho., or cornmeal ration, and 

 it is impossible for them to carry more than a lim- 

 ited number of days' rations. So the farther one 

 gets from the base of supplies the more difficult it 

 is to move, and a relay system must be employed. 

 Porters must be sent back for food, often six or 

 eight days; or else a bullock wagon must be used 

 for that purpose. In our safari we used two 

 wagons, drawn by thirty oxen, to supplement the 

 porters in keeping up food supplies, and even by so 

 doing there were times when rations ran low. In 

 such times we would shoot game for them, either 

 kongoni or zebra, both of which are considered 

 great delicacies by the black man. 



However, this is not telling about my memorable 

 elephant experiences in the Guas Ngishu Plateau. 



