260 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING 
[CH. X 
As she walked leisurely along, almost broadside to me, 
T fired the right barrel of the Holland into her head, 
knocking her flat down with the shock, and when she 
rose I put a bullet from the left barrel through her 
heart, again knocking her completely off her feet, and 
this time she fell permanently. She was a very old 
cow, and her ivory was rather better than in the average 
of her sex in this neighbourhood, the tusks weighing 
about eighteen pounds apiece. She had been ravaging 
the shambas overnight—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 
elephant 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 
wonderful 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 through the sun-flecked shadows 
underneath the great trees. Then we came out on high 
downs, covered with tall grass and littered with volcanic 
