The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter

by Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell

I was thoroughly disgusted, but the boys were jubilant. They thought he was enormous. I said that I could not think of hunting such stuff. The tusks looked about 10 lb.—when weighed afterwards they scaled 15 lb. each, being shorter in the hollow than I had guessed them. “Well,” I said, “if all your elephant are like this, I shall have to pull out.” Then came some more surprises. They said all the “red” elephant were the size of the one I had just killed, but that the “blue” elephant were much bigger. “And where were the ‘blue’ elephant to be found?” I asked sarcastically; for I thought all this just the usual bosh. “There were not many,” they said, “and they never mixed with the ‘red’ ones, but they were huge.”

“And how big were they?” I asked. “As high as that,” pointing with their spears to a height of about 11 ft. or 12 ft. After all, I thought, it might be so, more especially as I had seen a pair of tusks of about 25 lb. each on the “beach”—as a shipping port is always called in West Africa—which were reputed to have come from this country. We then camped by the dead elephant, and the business of cutting and drying meat on fires began.

In a way, the smallness of the elephant helped me, for the meat was soon all cut into strips and hanging over fires, and the boys were eager for more. Therefore I had no difficulty in getting some of them to go with me the next day to look for the so-called “blue” elephant. I thought that if these were as big as the natives said they were, they were probably wanderers from the interior, where I knew normal-sized elephant lived, having hunted them in the hinterland of the Ivory Coast.

We hunted all that day without success, but I saw the old tracks of an ordinary elephant. These the boys said were made by a “blue” elephant. We returned, after a long day, to the meat camp. The headman announced his intention of accompanying me on the morrow, as his women would arrive that evening and would take charge of the meat. Now, here is a curious thing about Africans. If one acquires, say, a lot of meat, he tries to get it into the charge of his wives as soon as possible. While he remains in possession everybody cadges from him: friends, relations, everybody of similar age, the merest acquaintances, all seem to think that he should share the meat with them. But once the meat is handed over to his wife it is secure. Whenever anyone asks for some he refers them to his wife. That ends it, for nobody will cadge from a woman, knowing, I suppose, that it would be hopeless, for if the wife were to part with any she would be severely beaten by the husband. Yet that same husband, while still in charge of the meat, cannot refuse to share it.

With this in view, the headman had sent a runner to the village to bring his women to the elephant shortly after death, and in the night of the second day they arrived. Our rather dismal little camp became quite lively. Fires were lit all over the place, and everyone was extremely animated. When natives have recovered from the effects of their first gorge of meat they become very lively indeed. If they have a large quantity of meat, requiring several days to smoke and dry it, they dance all night. The conventional morality of their village life is cast off, and they thoroughly enjoy themselves.

Early on the following day we were off for the big elephant. About twenty natives attached themselves to us. We wandered about, crossing numerous streams, until someone found tracks. If they were small I flatly refused to follow them. Late in the afternoon a real big track of a single bull was found. It was quite fresh and absurdly easy to follow. We soon heard him, and nothing untoward took place. The brain was where it ought to be, and he fell. As I anticipated, he was a normal elephant, about 10 ft. 10 ins. at the shoulder, with quite ordinary tusks weighing 31 lb. or 32 lb. The boys thought him a monster, and asked me what I thought of “blue” elephant. He certainly was much more nearly blue than the little red-mud coloured ones of the day before.

As it was too late for anyone to return to the village that night we all camped by the elephant. Being dissatisfied with the numbers of warrantable bulls about, I decided to return to the village with the boys. So off we set across country. We travelled and travelled, as I imagined, straight towards the village. This was far from being the case, as I discovered when we all stopped to examine a man-trail. It was ours. We had been slogging it in a huge circle, and here we were back again. I had often admired and envied the Africans for their wonderful faculty for finding their way where apparently there was nothing to indicate it. I have never yet been able to exactly “place” this extraordinary faculty. They cannot explain it themselves. They simply know the direction without taking bearings or doing anything consciously. Always puzzling over this sense which we whites have to such a poor degree, I have watched closely leading natives scores of times. The only thing they do, as far as I could observe, is to look at trees. Occasionally they recognise one, but they are not looking for landmarks. They are quite indifferent about the matter. Something, which we have probably lost, leads them straight on, even in pitch darkness.

The occasion of which I am writing is the exception which proves the rule, for it is the only instance of natives getting seriously lost which has come under my observation, and that is more than twenty years of hunting. For seriously lost we were. We wandered about in that forest for three days. Leader after leader was tried, only to end up on our old tracks. Food ran out. The boys had eaten all the elephant meat they brought with them. My food was finished, but the cartridges were not, thank goodness. I remember ordering a cartridge belt from Rigby to hold fifty rounds. He asked me what on earth I wanted with so many on it. I said I liked them, and here was the time when it paid to have them. For now we lived entirely on monkeys, and horrible things they are. Tasting as they smell, with burning and singeing added, they are the most revolting food it has ever been my bad luck to have eaten.

At the end of the third day I thought to myself that something would have to be done. This kind of thing would end in someone getting “done in” with exhaustion. As it seemed to me that I should be the first to drop out, it appeared to be up to me to do something. But what? I had not the foggiest notion where we were. But one thing I knew: water runs downhill. Brooklets run down into streams, streams down into rivers, rivers to seas. Next morning I took a hand. I made the boys follow scrupulously the winding bed of the first stream we came to. It joined a larger one; we followed that. Not a word of remonstrance would I listen to, nor would I tolerate any short cuts. At length we reached a large river, and I was relieved to see that they all recognised it. Did they “savvy” it? I asked. Yes, rather. So I sat down for a rest. The boys were having a fearful argument about something. It appeared that some held that our village lay up-stream, others that it was down-stream. They came to me to settle it. I asked the up-streamers to come out; they numbered seven. I counted the down-streamers; they numbered nine. I said: “The village lies down-stream”; and by the merest hazard it did.