HUNTING ELEPHANT AND RIDING LION 165 



does a stern chase after a band of travelling elephants. 

 When and where they are are likely to stop no one can tell. 

 The only thing to do is to follow on, sleep on the trail and 

 follow on again. Many of course will not give themselves 

 this trouble, and let a travelling herd go, taking their 

 chances of coming on other bands which are feeding. I 

 should not advise anyone to take up the chase unless he 

 is in fair condition, and a night under the stars has no 

 terrors for him. To go six or seven hours, hard as your 

 men can walk and run, and your mule or pony trot or canter, 

 and then to turn back, is a very wearying business. Let 

 them go, and trust to luck and another chance, or follow 

 on till you get your shot, or the herd gains some covert 

 where they are safe from pursuit. 



Though we were not destined to get elephant this time, 

 it seemed a good augury for our future to meet them so soon, 

 and, indeed, this day auspiciously begun was to prove 

 a red-letter day on our calendar. We had made ten or 

 twelve miles of the eighteen that separated us from our 

 camping ground, at the clear spring that rises two miles 

 beyond Sergoit, when H. suggested to me that we 

 might leave the sefari and explore an exceedingly likely 

 bit of country, through which in the rains a water course 

 trickled, one of those broad, shallow depressions in the 

 plain that are common in East Africa, its bottom dotted 

 with small rushy hollows where water lay occasionally, 

 its sides sometimes rocky, often sloping smoothly up to 

 the level an ideal place for lion. 



We followed the windings of this open donga for several 

 miles and saw great quantities of game. The nature of 

 the country enabled us often to get quite close before we 

 were seen. Oraby, topy, eland, warthog, scattered before 

 us, but we wanted lion and let them alone. It was a 

 charming ride, and over a country that must soon pass into 

 the settlers' hands. The soil and climate are too good, 



