ELEPHANT HUNTING 
255 
full information of the elephant in the neighborhood. He 
had no ’Ndorobo, but among the Wa-Meru, a wild mar¬ 
tial tribe, who lived close around him, there were a num¬ 
ber of hunters, or at least of men who knew the forest and 
the game, and these had been instructed to bring in any 
news. 
We had, of course, no idea that elephant would be 
found close at hand. But next morning, about eleven, 
Horne came to our camp with four of his black scouts, 
who reported that three elephants were in a patch of thick 
jungle beside the shambas, not three miles away. Horne 
said that the elephants were cows, that they had been in 
the neighborhood some days, devastating the shambas, 
and were bold and fierce, having charged some men who 
sought to drive them away from the cultivated fields; it is 
curious to see how little heed these elephants pay to the 
natives. I wished a cow for the museum, and also another 
bull. So off we started at once, Kermit carrying his camera. 
I slipped on my rubber-soled shoes, and had my gun- 
bearers accompany me barefooted, with the Holland and 
the Springfield rifles. We followed foot-paths among the 
fields until we reached the edge of the jungle in which the 
elephants stood. 
This jungle lay beside the forest, and at this point 
separated it from the fields. It consisted of a mass of rank¬ 
growing bushes, allied to the cotton-plant, ten or twelve 
feet high, with only here and there a tree. It was not good 
ground in which to hunt elephant, for the tangle was prac¬ 
tically impenetrable to a hunter save along the elephant 
trails, whereas the elephants themselves could move in 
any direction at will, with no more diflficulty than a man 
