African Game Trails 
663 
for several hours, and had left this sleep¬ 
ing ground some time before we reached it. 
After we had followed the trail a short while 
we made the experiment of trying to force 
our owh way through the jungle, so as to 
get the wind more favorable; but our prog¬ 
ress was too slow and noisy, and we re¬ 
turned to the path the elephants had beaten. 
Then the T-Idorobo went ahead, travelling 
parallel thereto. It was about noon. The 
elephants moved slowly, and we listened 
to the boughs crack, and now and then 
to the curious internal rumblings of the 
great beasts. Carefully, every sense on the 
alert, we kept pace with them. My double- 
barrel was in my hands, and wherever pos¬ 
sible, as I followed the trail, I stepped in 
the huge footprints of the elephant, for 
A waterbuck. 
From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt. 
noiselessly and at speed. One of them was 
clad in a white blanket, and another in a 
red one, which were conspicuous; but they 
were too silent and cautious to let the beasts 
see them, and could tell exactly where they 
were and what they were doing by the 
sounds. When these trackers waited for 
us they would appear before us like ghosts; 
once one of them dropped down from the 
branches above, having climbed a tree with 
monkey-like agility to get a glimpse of the 
great game. 
At last we could hear the elephants, 
and under Cuninghame’s lead we walked 
more cautiously than ever. The wind was 
right, and the trail of one elephant led close 
alongside that of the rest of the herd, and 
where such a weight had pressed there 
were no sticks left to crack under my feet. 
It made our veins thrill thus for half an 
hour to creep stealthily along, but a few 
rods from the herd, never able to see it, be¬ 
cause of the extreme denseness of the cover, 
but always hearing first one and then an¬ 
other of its members, and always trying to 
guess what each one might do, and keeping 
ceaselessly ready for whatever might befall. 
A flock of hornbills flew up with noisy clam¬ 
or, but the elephants did not heed them. 
At last we came in sight of the mighty 
game. The trail took a twist to one side, 
and there, thirty yards in front of us, we 
made out part of the gray and massive 
head of an elephant resting his tusks on the 
