African Game Trails 
163 
elephant fashion, plucking a 
big tuft, waving it noncha¬ 
lantly about in his trunk, and 
finally tucking it into his 
mouth; pausing to rub his 
side against a tree, or to 
sway to and fro as he stood; 
and continually waving his 
tail and half cocking his ears. 
At noon on January 5th, 
1910, we reached Butiaba, a 
sandspit and marsh on the 
shores of Lake Albert 
Nyanza. We had marched 
about one hundred and sixty 
miles from Lake Victoria. 
We camped on the sandy 
beach by the edge of the 
beautiful lake, looking across its waters to 
the mountains that walled in the opposite 
shore. At mid-day the whole landscape 
trembled in the white, glaring heat; as the 
afternoon waned a wind blew off the lake, 
and the west kindled in ruddy splendor as 
the sun went down. 
At Butiaba we took boats to go down the 
Nile to the Lado country. The head of 
the water transportation service in Uganda, 
Captain Hutchinson, R.N.R., met us, hav¬ 
ing most kindly decided to take charge of 
our flotilla himself. Captain Hutchinson 
was a mighty hunter, and had met with one 
most extraordinary experience while ele¬ 
phant hunting; in Uganda the number of 
hunters who have been killed or injured by 
elephants and buffaloes is large. He 
wounded a big bull in the head, and fol¬ 
lowed it for three days. The wound was 
serious and on the fourth day he overtook 
the elephant. It charged as soon as it saw 
him. He hit it twice in the head with his 
.450 double barrel as it came on, but neither 
stopped nor turned it; his second rifle, a 
double 8 bore, failed to act; and the ele¬ 
phant seized him in its trunk. It brandished 
him to and fro in the air several times, and 
then planting him on the ground knelt and 
stabbed at him with its tusks. Grasping 
one of its forelegs he pulled himself be¬ 
tween them in time to avoid the blow; and 
The launch “Kenia” a^ Butiaba. 
photograph by Edmund Heller. 
