OUR BACKYARD CIRCUS iii 



twenty-four hours old. He was talking to himself 

 most of the time. Now and then he would stop and 

 look at the track and point in the direction he evi- 

 dently thought the animal might have gone. He 

 would then pick a twig or leaf up and name the hour 

 it had been chewed on. Presently he was tracking 

 over short grass where there wasn't a single sign 

 visible to my untrained eye, not a smear of mud or 

 dirt left by the animal's foot. Finally he would 

 take scent like a bloodhound, go off like an arrow and 

 in a few minutes turn around with a grin, pointing to 

 the elephant he had been following. It was uncanny. 



Sometimes he had argimients with himself when he 

 didn't come on the elephants as soon as he thought he 

 ought to. He'd stop and look at the groimd and say, 

 "yes, yes." Then shake his head and slowly say, 

 "No, no." At last he would suddenly exclaim, 

 " Yes!'' with conviction and we would be off to find 

 another herd of elephants before an hour passed. 



When the time came for us seriously to take the 

 trail we didn't have to go far for a great deal of our 

 best film. I simply talked things over with Boculy, 

 decided on how and where we should operate and 

 organized my safari, or field expedition, to suit. 



There was one particular herd I had been wanting 

 to get at for months. It wasn't large ; but there were 

 some young ones in it which I wanted to photo- 

 graph. We finally set off after it fully equipped 



