CHAP. VIII.] 
LOSS OF FILFIL 
325 
high grass, as T had been forced to make a short run 
from the spot before I knew that the elephant had fol¬ 
lowed the horse ; thus I was nearly an hour before I 
found it, and also my azimuth compass that had fallen 
from my belt pouch. After much shouting and 
whistling, my mounted man arrived, and making him 
dismount I rode my little horse Mouse, and returned 
to the path. My horse Filfil was lost. As a rule, 
hunting during the march should be avoided, and I 
had now paid dearly for the indiscretion. 
1 reached the Atabbi river about eighteen miles from 
Obbo. This is a fine perennial stream flowing from 
the Madi mountains towards the west, forming an 
affluent of the Asua river. There was a good ford 
with a hard gravel and rocky bottom, over which the 
horse partly waded and occasionally swam. There 
were fresh tracks of immense herds of elephants with 
which the country abounded, and I heard them trum¬ 
peting in the distance. Ascending rising ground in 
perfectly open prairie on the opposite side of the 
Atabbi, I saw a dense herd of about two hundred ele¬ 
phants—they were about a mile distant and were moving 
slowly through the high grass, Just as I was riding 
along the path watching the immense herd, a Tetei 
(hartebeest) sprang from the grass in which he had 
been concealed, and fortunately he galloped across a 
