Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/69

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of elephants I was then working on for the African Hall in the American Museum of Natural History. I started out with four days' rations, gun boys, porters, camera men, and so forth—fifteen men in all. The second day out brought me to about nine thousand feet above sea level where the bamboo began. Following a well-worn elephant trail in search of this photographic material, I ran on to a trail of three old bulls. The tracks were old—probably as much as four days—but the size was so unusual that I decided to postpone the photography and follow them. I did not expect to have to catch up their four days' travel, for I hoped that they would be feeding in the neighbourhood and that the trail I was on would cross a fresher trail made in their wanderings around for food. I had run upon their tracks first about noon. I followed until dark without finding any fresher signs. The next morning we started out at daybreak and finally entered an opening such as elephants use as a feeding ground. It is their custom to mill around in these openings, eating the vegetation and trampling it down until it offers little more, and then move on. In six months or so it will be grown up again eight or ten feet high and they are very apt to revisit it and go through the same process again. Soon after we entered this opening I came suddenly upon fresh tracks of the elephants I had been following. Not only were the tracks fresh but the droppings were still steaming and I knew that the animals were not far away; certainly they had been there not more than an hour before. I followed