248 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
Then we struck into the great forest, and in an instant 
the sun was shut from sight by the thick screen of wet 
foliage. It was a riot of twisted vines, interlacing the trees 
and bushes. Only the elephant paths, which, of every age, 
crossed and recrossed it hither and thither, made it passable. 
One of the chief difficulties in hunting elephants in the 
forest is that it is impossible to travel, except very slowly 
and with much noise, off these trails, so that it is some¬ 
times very difficult to take advantage of the wind; and 
although the sight of the elephant is dull, both its sense 
of hearing and its sense of smell are exceedingly acute. 
Hour after hour we worked our way onward through 
tangled forest and matted jungle. There was little sign 
of bird or animal life. A troop of long-haired black and 
white monkeys bounded away among the tree tops. Here 
and there brilliant flowers lightened the gloom. We 
ducked under vines and climbed over fallen timber. Poison¬ 
ous nettles stung our hands. We were drenched by the 
wet boughs which we brushed aside. Mosses and ferns 
grew rank and close. The trees were of strange kinds. 
There were huge trees with little leaves, and small trees 
with big leaves. There were trees with bare, fleshy limbs, 
that writhed out through the neighboring branches, bear¬ 
ing sparse clusters of large frondage. In places the forest 
was low, the trees thirty or forty feet high, the bushes that 
choked the ground between, fifteen or twenty feet high. In 
other places mighty monarchs of the wood, straight and 
tall, towered aloft to an immense height; among them were 
trees whose smooth, round boles were spotted like syca¬ 
mores, while far above our heads their gracefully spread¬ 
ing branches were hung with vines like mistletoe and draped 
