264 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
cow, and her ivory was rather better than in the average 
of her sex in this neighborhood, the tusks weighing about 
eighteen pounds apiece. She had been ravaging the sham- 
bas over night—which accounted in part for the natives 
being so eager to show her to me—and in addition to leaves 
and grass, her stomach contained quantities of beans. 
There was a young one—^just out of calfhood, and quite 
able to take care of itself—with her; it ran off as soon as the 
mother fell. 
Early next morning Cuninghame and Heller shifted 
part of the safari to the stream near where the dead ele¬ 
phant lay, intending to spend the following three days in 
taking off and preparing the skin. Meanwhile Tarlton, 
Kermit, and I were to try our luck in a short hunt on the 
other side of Meru boma, at a little crater lake called Lake 
Ingouga. We could not get an early start, and reached 
Meru too late to push on to the lake the same day. 
The following morning we marched to the lake in two 
hours and a half. We spent an hour in crossing a broad 
tongue of woodland that stretched down from the wonder¬ 
ful mountain forest lying higher on the slopes. The trail 
was blind in many places because elephant paths of every 
age continually led along and across it, some of them being 
much better marked than the trail itself, as it twisted though 
the sun-flecked shadows underneath the great trees. Then 
we came out on high downs, covered with tall grass and 
littered with volcanic stones; and broken by ravines which 
were choked with dense underbrush. There were high 
hills, and to the left of the downs, toward Kenia, these 
were clad in forest. We pitched our tents on a steep cliff 
overlooking the crater lake—or pond, as it might more 
