236 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER ch. 
I took them back to camp with me, resolved to 
make an attempt to domesticate them. 
In this effort I only partially succeeded, for even 
when on their best behaviour, they evinced un¬ 
mistakable signs of their wild nature, and their 
odour remained unchanged to the last, surviving 
repeated attacks of the strongest of scented soaps. 
I used to call them to food with a cry resembling 
their own eerie howl, when prowling at night 
among the mysterious shadows of the forest, and 
they soon learned to come at once in response, 
but during feeding they reverted to wild animals 
pure and simple. Their diet, by the way, from the 
puppy stage, consisted solely of meat, in fact, they 
would touch no other kind of food, and as they 
were particularly fond of young, fat hippo, I have 
occasionally shot these animals in the Rovuma 
River on purpose to give them a treat. 
After three months of ‘civilization,’ the first, 
through some cause unknown to me, sickened and 
died, and when eighteen months old, the second 
picked up poison and came to an untimely end. 
The third, whom I called Jumbo, I kept for more 
than two years. He became a great pet of mine, 
and, considering his ancestry and nature, conceived 
an extraordinary affection for me, assiduously follow¬ 
ing me out on my hunting expeditions, and often, 
at evening, in camp, rolling and jumping about 
