CHAP. IX EXCURSIONS FROM EL BOGOI 193 



on a hill overlooking the valley beyond, where it bends round 

 to the eastward. Just before coming back, I heard elephants 

 trumpeting, away down stream, where there was extensive scrub ; 

 but it was already sundown and too late to go after them. 



Elephants are often noisy ; and the Ndorobo hunters say 

 that they cannot keep quiet for long. The sounds they make 

 are a great help in approaching them in dense cover, and are 

 taken advantage of by these people when in quest of them, so 

 as to avoid following the spoor if the wind is unfavourable. 

 An Ndorobo, when in the neighbourhood of the game, will 

 listen, with his attention on the strain, till he catches the sound 

 of a puff — as the beast blows through its trunk — a low rumble 

 of its intestines, or a snapping branch — sounds perhaps in- 

 audible to any one else, — and point, with expressive gesture 

 and every silent indication of suppressed excitement and 

 nervous tension, in the direction ; fixing with unerring decision 

 the exact spot in the jungle whence the sound emanates. But 

 the loud cries which are often uttered, and which may be heard 

 a long way off, are the voices of the females and young (more 

 often, probably, of the calves) ; the old bulls, which keep apart, 

 are more silent, and do not give vent, spontaneously, to such 

 undignified noises. The latter are, for this reason, sometimes 

 more difficult to locate. 



Numbers of Ndorobo women and children passed during 

 the day, following the men of yesterday to the harvest of 

 elephant meat. One poor old blind woman was led by a stick, 

 held by the one in front of her. It was wonderful how she 

 could walk ov-er this rough, stony country. Squareface re- 

 turned in the evening, having found only one more dead 

 elephant, which turned out to be the big bull I had first shot 

 at, and which I had felt so confident would be found. We had 

 now accounted for thirteen elephants, mostly bulls, killed during 

 that day's hunt up the Barasaloi. 



1 was feeling so ill the next morning that I sent Juma and 

 another man off to my El Bogoi camp for my medicine chest 



O 



