THE COLONEL KILLS THREE ELEPHANTS 143 
ton, who is managing the Roosevelt expedition, and 
Edmund Heller, the taxidermist of the expedition, 
came to our camp on the fourteenth of November 
to have luncheon and to talk over plans whereby 
Colonel Roosevelt was to kill one or more elephants 
for Mr. Akeley’s American museum group of five 
or six elephants. The details were all arranged 
and later in the afternoon the colonel and his party 
left for their own camp, only a short distance from 
ours. 
Mr. Akeley, with one of our tents and about 
forty porters, followed later in the evening and 
spent the night at the Roosevelt camp. The fol¬ 
lowing morning Colonel Roosevelt, Mr. Akeley, 
Mr. Tarlton and Kermit, with two tents and forty 
porters and gunbearers, started early in the hope 
of again finding the trail of the small herd of ele¬ 
phants that had been seen the day before. The 
trail was picked up after a short time and the party 
of hunters expected that it would be a long and 
wearisome pursuit, for it was evident that the ele¬ 
phants had become nervous and were moving stead¬ 
ily along without stopping to feed. In such cases 
they frequently travel forty or fifty miles before 
settling down to quiet feeding again. 
The country was hilly, deep with dry grass, and 
badly cut up with small gullies and jagged out¬ 
croppings of rock on the low ridges. At all times 
the ears of the hunting party were alert for any 
sound that would indicate the proximity of the 
herd, but for several hours no trumpeting, nor in- 
