Dec. 5, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
90 
[ pushed through the jungle, and on his knees 
11 the bull buffalo, shot through both lungs, 
incapable of rising. He turned and faced 
|l4I „ as I walked within a few feet of him, and I 
don’t think I have ever seen such a picture of 
rage incarnate as I saw in that noble beast. One 
more shot, and the mighty head with its seventy- 
two-inch spread of horn, sank to the ground. 
He looks down on me now as I write in this 
room with my best heads on the walls round 
me, the noblest of them all, to my mind, and the 
one I worked hardest for. 
I am afraid this article is proving very un¬ 
interesting to those who look for hair-breadth 
escapes among my oddments from my African 
diaries, but, as a matter of fact, I have had very 
few, and those not worth writing about. How¬ 
ever, I will recount an adventure with, two ele¬ 
phants, which really was a near thing, and which 
I would very heartily have avoided if it had 
been possible. It happened in this wise. We 
were camped in a bamboo forest, some 7,5 00 
feet up. It wasn’t a nice place. It rained all 
day and most of the night, and blew hard from 
sunset to sunrise. It was very cold, and there 
was no place to camp except on a hillside, and 
I do not like sleeping in a bed which looks as 
if it were pitched on the sloping roof of a house. 
And my natives didn’t like it either; in fact, 
they kept saying so in an unnecessarily per¬ 
sistent manner. They were not the nice, neatly 
clothed natives you see hanging about Mombasa 
and Nairobi, but Kikuyus, and their clothing 
was conspicuous by its absence. However, they 
worked well, looking for elephants, because 
they knew I wanted a tusker, and would not go 
till I got him. And I worked hard, too, for I 
wanted to get back to the warm plains nearly 
as much as they did. One night they came in 
with a report that there was a big bull in a 
herd of some thirty elephants about six miles 
off, and as they were feeding and had not got 
the men’s wind, I knew they would not go far 
away. So next morning I started early, and 
after a long march got to where the herd had 
been seen. However, they had moved off, so 
there was nothing to do but to follow them. 
It was awful country—very wet and through 
bamboos growing a few inches apart, and one 
had to follow the track of the elephants, for 
there are no other wild animals or men living 
up there to make easier tracks. And as ele¬ 
phants walk in Indian file as a rule and step in 
each other’s footsteps, the result was a series 
of holes about the size of a bucket and full of 
mud and water, into which I slipped every now 
and again. At length we got to a spot where 
the herd had moved off the track and were feed¬ 
ing in the surrounding forest. I started look¬ 
ing for the bull, but it was so thick I had to 
get close up to each animal, and as there was 
little wind this was very dangerous work. It 
was also very foplish, which I was quite aware 
of, but there was no choice except to go back, 
which I did not want to do. I had got close up 
to one elephant, only to find it was a cow, so 
got back into the track again, intending to have 
another look further on, where we could hear 
more of them feeding. My wife, of course, was 
not with me. I draw the line at elephant hunt¬ 
ing for ladies. 
I had just got back into the track when some 
of the elephants must have got my wind, for 
before I knew of it two came straight for me. 
My boys all bolted except my Swahili gun 
bearer. One of them threw a spear at the 
leading elephant, which, being made of trade 
iron, simply doubled up without making any 
more impression than a walking-stick would 
have done. I could only hear them coming, 
as the jungle was so thick, and I did not see 
them till they were nearly on top of me. 
I pulled at the first, and he went down, shot 
through the heart, as I was standing by the 
side of the track, and he swerved slightly as 
he saw me. By this time, the second one was 
almost on top of me, and, thank goodness, 
lowered his trunk. I had just time to swing 
my rifle round and fire, and he went down stone 
dead, killed by the head shot, a very rare oc- 
currence in the case of an African elephant. 1 
measured the distance afterward from where I 
stood to where they fell—twenty-five feet and 
fifteen feet respectively. 
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