In Africa: Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country

by John T. McCutcheon

My second elephant experience came the next day.

We started forth again, with a single tent, our guides and gunbearers, a cook and a couple of tent boys and twenty porters. This time we politely ignored all elephant trails in the dense bush and pushed on through the forest. Here it was infinitely better, for one could see some distance in all directions. We climbed steadily for a couple of thousand feet, always in forest so wild and grand and beautiful as to exceed all dreams of what an African forest could be. It more than fulfilled the preconceptions of a tropical forest such as you see described in stories of the Congo and the Amazon.

The air was cold in the shadows, but pleasant in the little open glades that occasionally spread out before us. Once or twice in the heart of that overwhelming forest we found little circular clearings so devoid of trees as to seem like artificial clearings. Once we found the skull of an elephant and scores of times we narrowly escaped the deep elephant traps that lay in our paths. Many times we saw evidences of the giant forest pig that lives on Mount Kenia and has only once or twice been killed by a white man. Sometimes we came to deep ravines with sides that led for a hundred feet almost perpendicularly through tangles of creepers and bogs of rotted vegetation.

We dragged ourselves up by clinging to vines and monkey ropes. On all sides was a solitude so vast as almost to overpower the senses. The sounds of bird life seemed only to intensify the effect of solitude. Once in a while we came upon evidences of human habitation, little huts of twigs and leaves, where the Wanderobo, or man of the forest, lived and hunted. Up in some of the trees were thin cylindrical wooden honey pots, some of them ages old and some comparatively new. And in the lower levels of the forest we saw where the Kikuyu women had come up for firewood. For some strange reason the elephants are not afraid of the native women and will not be disturbed by the sight of one of them. After seeing the women I am not surprised that they feel that way about it, but I don't see how they can tell the women from the men. Possibly because they know that only the women do such manual labor as to carry wood.

In the afternoon we reached the bamboos which lie above the forest belt. Here the ground is clean and heavily carpeted with dry bamboo leaves. The bamboos grow close together, all seemingly of the same size, and are pervaded with a cool, greenish shadow that is almost sunny in comparison with the deep, solemn shades of the great forest.

Then we struck a trail. The old Wanderobo guide said it was only an hour or so old and that we should soon overtake the elephant. It was evidently only one elephant and not a large one. It is fascinating to watch an experienced elephant hunter and to see how eloquent the trail is to him. A broken twig means something, the blades of grass turned a certain way will distinguish the fresh trail from the old one, the footprints in the soft earth, the droppings—all tell a definite story to him, and he knows when he is drawing down upon his quarry. As we proceeded his movements became slower and more cautious, and the plodding drudgery of following an elephant trail gave way to suppressed excitement.

It Looked Like the Rear Elevation of a Barn

Slower and slower he went, and finally he indicated that only the gunbearers and ourselves should continue. The porters were left behind, and in single file we moved on tiptoe along the trail. Then he stopped and by his attitude said that the quest was ended. The elephant was there. One by one we edged forward, and there, thirty yards away, partly hidden by slender bamboos, stood a motionless elephant. He seemed to be the biggest one I had ever seen. He was quartering, head away from us, and we could not see his tusks. If they were big, we were to shoot; if not, we were to let him alone. As we watched and waited for his head to turn we noticed that his ears began to wave slowly back and forth, like the gills of a fish as it breathes. The head slowly and almost imperceptibly turned, and Akeley signaled me to shoot. From where I stood I could not see the tusks at first, but as his head turned more I saw the great white shafts of ivory. The visible ivory was evidently about four feet long, and indicated that he carried forty or fifty pounds of ivory. Then, quicker than a wink, the great dark mass was galvanized into motion. He darted forward, crashing through the bamboo as though it had been a bed of reeds, and in five seconds had disappeared. For some moments we heard his great form crashing away, farther and farther, until it finally died out in the distance.

It was the first wild elephant I had ever seen, and it is photographed on my memory so vividly as never to be forgotten. I was more than half glad that I had not shot and that he had got away unharmed.