AN AFRICAN ELEPHANT-HUNT 



poor opinion of the courage of the average African native, we 

 again arrived in camp empty-handed. 



On the following afternoon when Mutari, flanked on either 

 side by our equally untruthful headman and interpreter, ap- 

 peared in the tent door with the announcement of the prox- 

 imity of numerous elephants, there was not the same flutter of 

 excitement that the tale would have produced a week earlier. 

 All that night it rained in torrents, and at one time the wind 

 became so violent that it was necessary for four of the men to 

 hold down our tent in order to keep it from blowing over. 

 Morning dawned hot, sultry, and depressing, and my friend, 

 having lost confidence in Mutari 's tales of the abundance of 

 game, I started out after these elephants accompanied only 

 by the old chief, my gun-bearer, and a porter carrying food and 

 a water-flask. The rain of the night had converted the soil into 

 a sticky red mud, through which we steadily floundered, while 

 swollen red torrents had formed in the many streams which we 

 were obliged to ford. We travelled for several hours through 

 misty fields of millet and com, through dripping groves of 

 bananas, and past collections of thatched huts, where thin 

 columns of bluish smoke struggled upward against the heavy, 

 moisture-laden air. Meanwhile, the only sounds that broke 

 the damp silence were the steady splashing of our small party 

 and the mournful cooing of thousands of doves in the trees 

 around us. 



Then we entered the gloom and silence of the forest, where 

 everything was mouldy and dripping, and overhead the foliage 

 and branches of the great trees formed a solid mat which shut 

 out the rays of light entirely. Great lianas hung from tree to 

 tree; wonderful ferns and tropical flowers covered the mouldy 

 ground ; and there was no noise but the incessant harsh cough- 

 ing of a species of monkey hidden in the matted mass of drip- 

 ping foliage above. Two hours later we suddenly emerged into 

 a cleared and cultivated country, which was an outlying settle- 



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