THREE MONTHS IN PAHANG 
But we noticed another truck to the left of the path which we 
mistook for a loop track made at the same time that tlie 
olepliant had been making the tracks that we were following- 
Owing to the rain we did not notice that this lo^p was tiiucli 
fresher than the track we were fuUowing. A little farther on 
the tracks took ns across the river and then up into the most 
awful country that it has ever been my lot in which to Imnt 
an elephant. He had evidentl}' spent three or four days 
wandering round these steep mountain faces unable to make 
up his miud whether to follow the herd or not which had 
come into his domain. We found one hill v\hich w as evidently 
a favourite haunt of hir?, tracks of all ages, and sleeping places 
in all stages of deca)^ covered the hill side. Here he had 
made a regular roadway round the steep sidelong ground of 
the hill, a track quite three feet wide having been pounded 
down by his mighty feet. I diligently searched for signs of 
his tusks where he had lain down, and' as most of his "beds'* 
had been made on the side of an ant hill or on the steep slope 
of the hill itself in most places we found the impression of his 
tusks. 
He certainly had thick tusks. I con Id put my arm 
into the holes made by them in the hill side, but they did not 
appear to be very long. I tried to persuade myself that the 
ground was too hard for them to have penetrated very far. 
Surely such a huge elephant must carry a fine pair of tusks 
I said to myself. The paths we follo\\ed were almost a 
continuous line of slippery yellow clay, and the strain on the 
side of ones feet when one had to he in a constant state 
of unstable equilibrium was very great. Late in the afternoon 
after circling round so many times that we were perilously 
ne:irly losing our sense of location^we came down on to lower 
ground and struck a river. The Sungei Katiav, said Wan 
Hadji, up near Pamah Ruan, Crossing the river we halted 
and decided to camp- Our spirits were high, we had covered 
ai>out four days of the beasts tracks during this one day and 
we hoped to find him on the morrow, he was going verv 
slowly and feeding extensively. The carriers were still 
behind, so we started to make our shelter for the night. 
Going off to collect palm leaves, I foimd a broad game path, 
which at once attracted my attention because it had quite 
recently been used by man, A few yards on I recognised 
a familiar object — the impression of my own boot. We had 
come back to our track of the morning. I called to Yasin 
who was close by and we followed the path for a little distance 
and found the place where we had noticed the tracks to the 
left about nine o'clock that morning. Following this track we 
