■^ After Elephants with Wandorobo 



hard by animals, evidently during the last few days. 

 Large numbers of rhinoceroses have trampled down this 

 way to the water, but neither they nor the elephants 

 are to be seen in the neighbourhood while the sun is up. 

 They are too well acquainted with the habits of their 

 enemy man, and they keep at a safe distance out on 

 the velt. To-day, therefore, I am to catch no glimpse 

 of either elephant or rhinoceros. Wherever I turn my 

 eyes, however, I see other animals of all sorts — among 

 others, some more big giraffes. I am not to be put off, 

 however, and I decide to follow up the tracks of a number 

 of the elephants, evidently males, giving myself up anew 

 to the unfailing interest I find in the study of their ways, 

 and confirming the observations I had already made as 

 to their finding their chief nourishment on the velt in 

 tree-bark and small branches. 



Night set in more quickly than we expected while 

 we were pitching camp before sunset in a cutting in a 

 thorn-thicket. Spots on which fires had recently been 

 lit showed us that native hunters had been there a few 

 days before, and my guides said they must have been 

 the Wakamba people, keen elephant-hunters, with whom 

 they live at enmity, and of whose very deadly poisoned 

 arrows they stand in great dread. Therefore we drew 

 close round a very small camp-fire, carefully kept down. 

 The glow of a big fire might have brought the Wakamba 

 people down on us if they were anywhere in the neigh- 

 bourhood. It seems that natives who are at war often 

 attack each other in the dark. It may easily be imagined, 

 then, that the first hours of our "night's repose" were 



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