•'LITTLE HALF-BROTHER" 6i 



tribes from waterholes when we want to take pos- 

 session and make pictures. 



Altogether he is Napoleon and Mussolini rolled in 

 one, though he seems to have no organized follow- 

 ing. He is contented with the exercise of his power 

 only for some immediate necessity. 



In endurance, too, none equal him. He will slip 

 away Hke a ghost of the desert on some mysterious 

 errand, fade away "in the blue," trek hundreds of 

 miles without tent or blanket or food and water- 

 bottle, traversing wastes where we know from experi- 

 ence the waterholes are fifty to sixty miles apart — 

 then reappear, his mission accomplished, and take his 

 place in camp quite as if he had left us but the minute 

 before. 



But it was not the mystery of him nor the inscrut- 

 ability of his wise old face that most impressed us. 

 It was his baffling knowledge of all the four-footed 

 inhabitants of the wild and their ways, particu- 

 larly of the elephants to which he is little half- 

 brother. 



He seemed to have a peculiar and almost super- 

 natural instinct for game. He could scent it like a 

 bloodhound. One morning, as was his custom, he 

 had been up at sunrise and off to a waterhole three 

 miles away, where, he assured us, we would find 

 plenty of "fem&o," or elephant. How he knew they 

 were there was beyond us, since all the elephants 



