4 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER ch. i 
heedlessness of the wild. It calls and calls. And 
oh, the glorious sunshine—how it steeps right 
into the very soul! At times you fervently 
hate it, for you recall baked lips, and a tongue 
clinging with thirst to the roof of your mouth, 
but return to England in the winter and you will 
discover how intimately the visual aspect of a 
country, bathed in brilliant sunshine, has played 
upon those hidden strings of the mind that go to 
form what is called cheerfulness. Ugh! the 
bleakness of a December day ! 
‘ Dembo, bwana! ’ (Elephant, master!) What 
a thrill these words send through a hunter! 
One of my trackers has come upon the fresh 
spoor of elephants. We examine their tracks 
and can tell by the size of the foot-prints 
whether they have been made by male or 
female, and by the freshness of the impressions, 
the approximate time that has elapsed since 
they passed. The presence of strewn leaves 
and broken branches and their condition indicate 
when they fed, and whether they are meander¬ 
ing, or moving steadily ahead for some fixed 
goal—for elephants know the country quite as 
intimately as its human inhabitants. They are 
obliged to know it: on their knowledge of 
feeding-grounds, water-holes, and dense cover, 
their lives depend. 
