190 
IN AFRICA 
found again some distance onward. We followed 
the trail for hours, and then, night coming on, we 
went into camp near a small stream, choked with 
luxuriant vegetation. Akeley thought he heard a 
faint squeal of an elephant far off, and while the 
porters made camp we went on for a mile or so to 
investigate. But no further sounds indicated the 
proximity of the herd. 
Early the next morning we took up the trail 
again, and in less than an hour my Masai sais 
pointed off to a distant slope a couple of miles 
away, where a black line appeared. It looked like 
an outcropping of rock. Akeley looked at it and 
exclaimed, “By George, I believe he’s got them!” 
and a moment later, after he had directed his glasses 
on the distant spot, he said briskly, “That’s right, 
they’re over there.” And so, for the first time, after 
having scanned suspicious-looking spots in the land¬ 
scape for weeks and always with disappointment, 
I saw a herd of real live elephants. To the naked 
eye they looked more like little shifting black 
beetles than anything else, but in the glasses they 
were plainly revealed with swaying bodies and flap¬ 
ping ears and swinging trunks. 
In elephant hunting the first important thing to 
consider is the wind, for the elephant is very keen- 
scented and is quick to detect a breath of danger in 
the breeze. Fortunately we had seen them in time. 
If we had gone ahead a few hundred yards they 
would have got our wind and gone away in 
alarm, but this had not occurred. We could see 
