278 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
I landed at many points for the purpose of shooting, 
and to study and collect birds, and almost everywhere 
the evidence of the presence of elephants in numbers 
surprised. In places the forests were regularly devastated, 
big trees uprooted or broken down, while the more open 
parts were corrugated, ploughed up and pitted with spoor 
two feet deep, sometimes covering hundreds of acres. 
Particularly was this the case near Kenisa where a herd 
of cow-elephants, enraged and aggressive by reason of 
the best bulls having been picked out, was known as 
Elephant Cow and Calf, near Sheikh Tombe. 
“the charging thousand.” These deep tracks are made, 
of course, in the rainy season, when the mud is soft and 
plastic: in winter it is hard as iron. 
Here is a note from Gondokoro :—“Within a couple 
of hours from station the forest is fairly rent to bits 
by elephants : measured several trees overthrown, 32 to 
38 inches in circumference: another, bigger at base, had 
been torn down at 15 feet above ground, some branches 
stripped clean of leaf, others left green, as though destroyed 
out of sheer mischief. Measured the biggest spoor I 
could find—19 inches across forefoot.” 
Naturally, in extra-dry seasons, such as that of 
1912-13, elephants are found concentrated on the banks 
