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 over 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. 
I 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 
