66 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA 
CHAP. 
cultivated grounds, far below, belonging to a tribe called 
Mnyithu (the same I afterwards had the difference with), where 
elephants had frequently been seen of late. The fact was we 
were not provisioned for a campaign in the bush, and they— 
and my own men too—were hungry ; so, as I had seen no 
game, I was constrained to consent. We had the most trying 
day imaginable, through the very densest, most abominable 
jungle it is possible to conceive. Our guides eventually lost 
themselves and us, and it was not till late in the afternoon that 
we at last struggled out into shambas. We had found no 
fresh spoor all day (except of a bushbuck) ; but I was rewarded 
for my toil by a wonderful display of gorgeous butterflies 
around a spring of crystal water in a valley, at which we rested 
while I caught a number of fine specimens. 
After an uncomfortable and rather hungry night, I was 
shown the spoor of two bulls ; and I made another attempt 
to overcome the difficulties of these extensive thickets. But it 
was useless ; it is so leafy one cannot see a yard ; and after 
much crawling through tunnels, shoving one’s way—bent 
double—or charging sideways between the meeting bushes, all 
the satisfaction I had was to find the bulls had winded us and 
gone. It seemed wonderful how such huge creatures could 
crash through and leave so small an opening after their passage. 
I followed for an hour or two all their windings, but, as they 
kept down wind, had to give in. We had still a great deal of 
this sort of leafy, elastic cover to overcome on our way toward 
camp, after relinquishing the pursuit, before we at length, to our 
infinite relief, got once more into the cool, pleasant forest. It 
was delightful to swing along its shady avenues, comparatively 
free from undergrowth, and seemed rest by comparison with 
the labour of tearing one’s way through that dreadful jungle. 
I felt that I had done all I could here, for the time, and 
that hunting elephants—dispersed as they seemed now to be— 
in this almost limitless, impassable tract, in whose depths they 
found a secure retreat, was waste of strength and energy. It 
