WE MARCH FOR THE MOUNTAINS 197 



her companions in the foreground, while off on the 

 neighboring hillside three distinct groups of ele- 

 phants were in view. The latter were thoroughly 

 alarmed and moved away very swiftly for some 

 distance and then came to a pause. The big cow 

 and her attendants then moved off, feeling that the 

 retreat had been successfully effected. Once more 

 we followed them and came up to them, and then 

 once more we were flanked by a number of ele- 

 phants that had previously disappeared over the 

 hill. They had swung around and were returning 

 directly toward where we stood, unsuspecting. 



We barely had time to fall back to some small 

 bushes, where we waited while the flanking party 

 approached. They came almost toward us, and 

 when only about fifty feet away I ventured a photo- 

 graph, feeling that, if successful, it would be the 

 closest picture ever made of a herd of wild ele- 

 phants. I used a Verascope, a small stereoscopic 

 French machine whose "click" is almost noiseless. 

 The elephants advanced and we huddled together 

 with rifles ready in the patch of bushes. It seemed 

 a certainty that they would charge, and that if our 

 bullets could not turn them we would be completely 

 annihilated. But as yet there was no sign that they 

 saw us, or, if they did, they could not distinguish 

 our motionless forms from the foliage of the scrub. 



At last, the foremost elephant, barely thirty feet 

 from us, came to the trail in the grass by which we 

 had retreated when we first saw them. The trunk, 

 sweeping ahead of it as if feeling for the scent of 



