7 o 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA 
CHAP. 
the wounded elephant, but decided to go and cut off the tails 
of the two that were down before following it. Passing the 
second one I had shot, to go to the first and largest, to my 
intense chagrin I could not see it ; and, looking carefully, found 
where it had lain, but only a large pool of blood there now, 
no elephant! This is an instance of the disappointments a 
hunter has to bear, after days of hard toil and fatigue, just 
when he has the fruits within his grasp. We then took up the 
spoor of the large cow which I had left for dead. We followed 
it a good way (or what we believed to be its spoor, for there 
was some confusion of tracks owing to there being blood 
on the spoors of both this and the other I had wounded), 
and then heard the cry of an elephant ahead several times 
at intervals, and at last got so close as to hear its stomach 
rumbling once. The bush was here pretty thick, though the 
ground was as rocky as ever. 1 tried to get up to it, but it 
probably heard or winded me, for I only got a rather distant 
glimpse of the top of its back as it made off. We tried to 
follow, but the rocks made running almost impossible, and 
though I climbed a tree it was nowhere to be seen ; all I saw 
were two giraffes calmly browsing quite close by—much closer 
than one can ever get to them when you want to shoot one. 
We lost much time and also the spoor by this ; and when, after 
trying back, we did at last again pick up the latter, it was 
afternoon, we were all very fagged, thirsty and disappointed, and 
I decided to give it up. 
The day had been excessively hot and sultry, the sun 
beating down upon and being reflected by the rocks with 
terrible power ; the going had been trying in the extreme, 
and the men had stupidly forgotten or neglected to fill the 
water bottles. I had done a lot of running, too, as far as it 
was possible to run among such* a jumble of rocks ; but what 
made me the victim of thirst especially that day (for I do not 
commonly suffer in that way) was that I had drunk cocoa instead 
of tea that morning. So when at last, well on into the 
