Elephants 



believe that an elephant he has badly wounded and which 

 may perhaps be lying dead half a mile away, has only been 

 slightly wounded or even not at all, afterwards either 

 stealing the tusks or following up the wounded elephant and 

 killing it for themselves. Personally and contrary to the 

 ideas of other sportsmen, I have no time for the Pigmy as a 

 tracker or guide, much preferring the half-breed Swahili 

 hunters bom in the forest, who besides being intelligent, will, 

 for hard cash sell you any secret, and take a man to the forest 

 fastnesses where the big bulls are to be found. 



These half-breeds are, of course, adepts at aU kinds of 

 roguery and live on the proceeds obtained from illicit ivory 

 hunting and trading. When out of powder for their old 

 muzzle-loaders, they organise the Pigmies in the setting of 

 cunning elephant traps, with which the forest abounds. 

 These usually take the form of heavy iron harpoons embedded 

 in a section of ten-inch timber, which formidable and dangerous 

 weapon is slung high up over an elephant track between two 

 trees, in such a way that the animal passing beneath sets 

 off the trap himself, receiving the weighted spear in the 

 centre of its shoulders. With another method, that of large 

 pit-falls, the natives are not very successful ; the elephant 

 in many cases is intelligent enough to heave himself out, 

 at other times being helped out by the trunks of his comrades. 



Before passing on to describe a few out of the many 

 hundreds of experiences with elephants that have fallen to 

 my lot, and for the benefit of the big-game hunter who would 

 prefer a more accessible and less dangerous hunting ground 

 in the Congo, let me recommend him to try either the lower 

 Luvua River that flows out of the north end of Lake Mweru, 

 which place is easily accessible by the Cape to Congo Railway, 



227 



