206 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA 
CHA1>. 
a little way farther, but the path soon became almost im¬ 
passable, and I decided it would be foolhardy to go on where 
escape would be impossible and one might be trampled to 
death without any malicious intention on the part of the 
elephants. Besides, it was getting dusk ; so, as we could see 
nothing of my wounded elephant, I made for camp. I had 
an instinctive confidence that this elephant was mortally hit, 
and felt no doubt but that I should secure his short thick tusks 
(of which I had caught a clear enough view to show that they 
were those of a young bull). It took us till quite eight o’clock 
to reach camp, going hard through the open. After cleaning 
my rifles and the usual bath I got some dinner about ten and 
turned in by eleven, well pleased with this extra stroke of luck— 
an unexpected one, as I had supposed all the elephants to have 
already cleared out of the whole valley. We had no Ndorobo 
natives with us, so had to rely entirely on our own spooring on 
this hunt, nor did any turn up at all that day. 
As we had been already loaded up to the last pound almost 
we could possibly carry, with the additional ivory now obtained 
it would be beyond the capacity of my little party to trans¬ 
port all at once. So, first thing on the morning after the hunt 
just described, I sent off four porters with loads of ivory for El 
Bogoi camp, in charge of Fundi, one of my responsible men. 
The porters were to return at once, after depositing the ivory, 
and should, I calculated, get back on the third day. The tusks 
were, as usual, to be buried at once, for greater security, and 
particularly as a precaution against fire ; for ivory is said to 
burn like a candle, and the grass huts in which one stores one’s 
goods are particularly inflammable and liable to catch fire 
through the carelessness of the men in charge. 
Soon after despatching them, I started again, to see if any 
elephants were still to be found in the neighbourhood. Cutting 
across the valley again, to find out if the herd had come this 
way in the night, we found spoor at once, close to camp. We 
wasted a lot of time puzzling it out, before we could get fairly 
