Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/180

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this offer. Coming from a Scotchman it was quite unexpected, but it was typical of Cuninghame's generosity and indicative of his interest in scientific work.

He taught me as much as one man can learn from another about the game of hunting elephants. There are some things which one can learn only through experience, and in elephant hunting most of the essentials must be learned in that way. It is easy and natural to assume that these huge beasts will always be too obvious for the unexpected to happen. But in spite of their size they are not always easy to see, for in their own country elephants are the colour of the shadows and on occasion quite as silent. In a forest or rock environment one may almost literally run on to an elephant before being aware of its presence. The fact that Cuninghame spent so many years hunting the great game of Africa without ever being mauled is evidence of his skill.

We went together to the Aberdare and killed one elephant—the single tusker now in the group in the Field Museum in Chicago. Then we went down to the government station at Fort Hall and got permission to go up on Mt. Kenia for further elephant shooting. We spent six weeks on the slopes of the mountain, I as an amateur under Cuninghame's tutelage. And he was a real elephant hunter. He had killed many elephants, and his long experience had given him a great deal of that knowledge about elephants which would enable him to kill them without himself being killed. On the other hand, Cun-