THE WESTERN BEND 243 



pointed. With the prism binocular I presently made out 

 the objects of their ebullition ; but, being hardly convinced, 

 brought a telescope of 35 diameters to bear. Now the 

 Sudanese possess extraordinarily good eyesight and are, 

 moreover, habituated to seeing big-game. Nevertheless, 

 they were, in this instance, mistaken and well they 

 might be. For a more perfect verisimilitude of a bull- 

 elephant could scarce be conceived than what presently 

 stood disclosed on the object-glass. No detail lacked 

 not even a tail! The trunk was upraised in the act of 

 tearing down branches. The illusion was complete. 

 Around this "elephant" at short intervals, stood other 

 dark objects each precisely in form resembling an 

 elephant, as those great pachyderms appear when in 

 shade and half-hidden by deep grass. I took a second 

 and a third long spy with the telescope before finally 

 deciding. The suspects, one and all, were conical ant-hills, 

 built in 6-foot cane -grass and set off by forest-shade 

 above ; while the crucial figure which had first arrested 

 attention was a combination of two ant-hills, one half- 

 eclipsed by the other, while from the farther hill arose 

 a tall chimney-like shaft slightly inclined from the per- 

 pendicular and vanishing amid the foliage above. A 

 more perfect optical illusion Nature never produced as 

 the rough sketch may serve to show. My men, unable 

 to use the telescope, remained unconvinced, excitedly 

 reiterating that they still saw elephants. To assure 

 myself that the keenness of savage eyesight does not 

 surpass in power a modern telescope, I now started to 

 examine the whole covert yard by yard with this strange 

 result. Not 100 yards to the right of the tree-smashing 

 "elephant," there showed up on the object-glass, dreamily 

 dozing away the midday hours, two great buffalo! I 

 could even catch the intercepted sun-rays at intervals on 

 their horns. Beside and beyond these were other dark 

 objects too indistinct to recognise, but which probably 

 represented a herd lying down. I now fixed the telescope 



