THE WESTERN BEND 
243 
pointed. With the prism binocular I presently made out 
the objects of their ebullition ; but, being hardly convinced, 
brought a telescope of 35 diameters to bear. Now the 
Sudanese possess extraordinarily good eyesight and are, 
moreover, habituated to seeing big-game. Nevertheless, 
they were, in this instance, mistaken'—and well they 
might be. For a more perfect verisimilitude of a bull- 
elephant could scarce be conceived than what presently 
stood disclosed on the object-glass. No detail lacked— 
not even a tail! The trunk was upraised in the act of 
tearing down branches. The illusion was complete. 
Around this “elephant” at short intervals, stood other 
dark objects each precisely in form resembling an 
elephant, as those great pachyderms appear when in 
shade and half-hidden by deep grass. I took a second 
and a third long spy with the telescope before finally 
deciding. The suspects, one and all, were conical ant-hills, 
built in 6-foot cane-grass and set off by forest-shade 
above; while the crucial figure which had first arrested 
attention was a combination of two ant-hills, one half- 
eclipsed by the other, while from the farther hill arose 
a tall chimney-like shaft slightly inclined from the per¬ 
pendicular and vanishing amid the foliage above. A 
more perfect optical illusion Nature never produced—as 
the rough sketch may serve to show. My men, unable 
to use the telescope, remained unconvinced, excitedly 
reiterating that they still saw elephants. To assure 
myself that the keenness of savage eyesight does not 
surpass in power a modern telescope, I now started to 
examine the whole covert yard by yard—with this strange 
result. Not 100 yards to the right of the tree-smashing 
“elephant,” there showed up on the object-glass, dreamily 
dozing away the midday hours, two great buffalo! I 
could even catch the intercepted sun-rays at intervals on 
their horns. Beside and beyond these were other dark 
objects too indistinct to recognise, but which probably 
represented a herd lying down. I now fixed the telescope 
