190 IN AFRICA 



found again some distance onward. We followed 

 the trail for hours, and then, night coming on, we 

 went into camp near a small stream, choked with 

 luxuriant vegetation. Akeley thought he heard a 

 faint squeal of an elephant far off, and while the 

 porters made camp we went on for a mile or so to 

 investigate. But no further sounds indicated the 

 proximity of the herd. 



Early the next morning we took up the trail 

 again, and in less than an hour my Masai sais 

 pointed off to a distant slope a couple of miles 

 away, where a black line appeared. It looked like 

 an outcropping of rock. Akeley looked at it and 

 exclaimed, "By George, I believe he's got them!" 

 and a moment later, after he had directed his glasses 

 on the distant spot, he said briskly, "That's right, 

 they're over there." And so, for the first time, after 

 having scanned suspicious-looking spots in the land- 

 scape for weeks and always with disappointment, 

 I saw a herd of real live elephants. To the naked 

 eye they looked more like little shifting black 

 beetles than anything else, but in the glasses they 

 were plainly revealed with swaying bodies and flap- 

 ping ears and swinging trunks. 



In elephant hunting the first important thing to 

 consider is the wind, for the elephant is very keen- 

 scented and is quick to detect a breath of danger in 

 the breeze. Fortunately we had seen them in time. 

 If we had gone ahead a few hundred yards they 

 would have got our wind and gone away in 

 alarm, but this had not occurred. We could see 



