ELEPHANT HUNTING NOT AN OCCASION FOR LIGHTSOME MERRYMAKING. FIVE HUNDRED
THOUSAND ACRES OF FOREST IN WHICH THE KENIA ELEPHANT LIVES, WANDERS AND
BRINGS UP HIS CHILDREN
The peril and excitement of elephant hunting can not be realized by any
one who has known only the big, placid elephants of the circus, or fed
peanuts to a gentle-eyed pachyderm in the park. To the person thus
circumscribed in his outlook, the idea of killing an elephant and
calling it sport is little short of criminal. It would seem like going
out in the barnyard and slaying a friendly old family horse.
That was my point of view before I went to Africa, but later experiences
caused the point of view to shift considerably. If any one thinks that
elephant hunting is an occasion for lightsome merrymaking he had better
not meet the African elephant in the rough. Most people are acquainted
with only the Indian elephant, the kind commonly seen in captivity, and
judge from him that the elephant is a sort of semi-domesticated beast of
burden, like the camel and the ox. Yet the Indian elephant is about as
much like his African brother as a tomcat is like a tiger.
[Photograph: The Hyenas Had Feasted Well]
[Photograph: By courtesy of W.D. Boyce. Great Stretches of Dense
Forest]
[Drawing: _Being Killed by an Elephant Is a Very Mussy Death_]
Many African hunters consider elephant hunting more dangerous than lion,
rhino, or buffalo hunting, any one of which can hardly be called an
indoor sport. These are the four animals that are classed as "royal
game" in game law parlance, and each one when aroused is sufficiently
diverting to dispel any lassitude produced by the climate. It is wakeful
sport--hunting these four kinds of game--and in my experience elephant
hunting is the "most wakefullest" of them all.
In my several months of African hunting I had four different encounters
with elephants. The first two were on Mount Kenia and the last two were
on the Guas Ngishu Plateau, near where it merges into the lower slopes
of Mount Elgon. The first and the fourth experiences were terrifying
ones, never to be forgotten. An Englishman, if he were to describe them,
would say "they were rather nasty, you know," which indicates how really
serious they were. The second and the third experiences were
interesting, but not particularly dangerous.
Mount Kenia is a great motherly mountain that spreads over an immense
area and raises its snow-capped peaks over eighteen thousand feet above
the equator. The lower slopes are as beautiful as a park and are covered
with the fields and the herds of the prosperous Kikuyus and other
tribes. Scores of native villages of varying sizes are picturesquely
planted among the banana groves and wooded valleys on this lower slope,
each with its local chief, or sultan, and each tribe with its head
sultan.
In a day's "trek" one meets many sultans with their more or less naked
retinues, and every one of them spits on his hand, presses it to his
forehead, and shakes hands with you. It is the form of greeting among
the Kikuyus, and, in my opinion, might be improved. These people lead a
happy pastoral life amid surroundings of exceptional beauty. Above the
cultivated _shambas_, or fields of sweet potatoes and tobacco and sugar
and groves of bananas, comes a strip of low bush country. It is a mile
or two wide, scarcely ten feet high, and so dense that nothing but an
elephant could force its way through the walls of vegetation. Most of
the bushes are blackberry and are thorny.
[Drawing: _Following the Trail_]
The elephants in their centuries of travel about the slopes have made
trails through this dense bush, and it is only by following these trails
that one can reach the upper heights of the mountain. Above the bush
belt comes the great forest belt, sublimely grand in its hugeness and
beauty, and above this belt comes the encircling band of bamboo forest
that reaches up to the timber line. There are probably five hundred
thousand acres of forest country in which the Kenia elephant may live
and wander and bring up his children. He has made trails that weave and
wind through the twilight shades of the forest, and the only ways in
which a man may penetrate to his haunts are by these ancient trails.
Mount Kenia, as seen from afar, looks soft and green and easy to stroll
up, but no man unguided could ever find his way out if once lost in the
labyrinth of trails that criss-cross in the forest.
For many years the elephants of Kenia have been practically secure from
the white hunter with his high-powered rifles. Warfare between the
native tribes on the slopes has been so constant that it was not until
three or four years ago that it was considered reasonably safe for the
government to allow hunting parties to invade the south side of the
mountain. Prior to that time the elephant's most formidable enemies were
the native hunter, who fought with poisoned spears and built deep pits
in the trails, pits cleverly concealed with thin strips of bamboo and
dried leaves, and the ivory hunting poachers. In 1906 the government
granted permission to Mr. Akeley to enter this hitherto closed district
to secure specimens for the Field Museum, and even then there was only a
narrow strip that was free from tribal warfare. It was at that time that
his party secured seven splendid tuskers, one of which, a
one-hundred-fifteen-pound tusker shot by Mrs. Akeley, was the largest
ever killed on Mount Kenia. And it was to this district that Mr. Akeley
led our _safari_ late in October to try again for elephants on the old
familiar stamping ground. We pitched our camp in a lovely spot where one
of his camps had stood three years before, just at the edge of the thick
bush and on the upper edge of the _shambas_. News travels quickly in
this country, and in a short time many of his old Kikuyu friends were at
our camping place. One or two of the old guides were on hand to lead the
way into elephant haunts and the natives near our camp reported that the
elephants had been coming down into their fields during the last few
days. Some had been heard only the day before. So the prospects looked
most promising, and we started on a little hunt the first afternoon
after arriving in camp.
[Drawing: _The Old Wanderobo Guide_]
We took one tent and about twenty porters, for when one starts on an
elephant trail there is no telling how long he will be gone or where he
may be led. We expected that we would have to climb up through the strip
of underbrush, and perhaps even as far up as the bamboos, in which event
we might be gone two or three days. In addition to the porters we had
our gunbearers and a couple of native guides. One of these was an old
Wanderobo, or man of the forest, who had spent his life in the solitudes
of the mountain and was probably more familiar with the trails than any
other man. He wore a single piece of skin thrown over his shoulders and
carried a big poisoned elephant spear with a barb of iron that remains
in the elephant when driven in by the weight of the heavy wooden shaft.
The barb was now covered with a protective binding of leaves. He led the
way, silent and mild-eyed and very naked, and the curious little
skin-tight cap that he wore made him look like an old woman. As we
proceeded, other natives attached themselves to us as guides, so that by
the time we were out half an hour there were four or five savages in the
van.
[Photograph: He Was a Very Important Sultan]
[Photograph: Saying Good-bye to Colonel Roosevelt]
[Photograph: A Visiting Delegation of Kikuyus]
No words can convey to the imagination the density of that first strip
of bush. It was like walking between solid walls of vegetation, matted
and tangled and bright with half-ripened blackberries. The walls were
too high to see over except as occasionally we could catch glimpses of
tree-tops somewhere ahead. We wound in and out along the tortuous path,
and it was also torture-ous, for the thorn bushes scratched our hands
and faces and even sent their stickers through the cloth into our knees.
The effect on the barelegged porters was doubtless much worse.
After a couple of hours of marching in those cañons of vegetation we
entered the lower edge of the forest and left the underbrush behind. We
soon struck a fairly fresh elephant trail and for an hour wound in and
out among the trees, stumbling over "monkey ropes" and gingerly avoiding
old elephant pits. There were dozens of these, and if it had not been
for the fact that our old guide carefully piloted us past them I'm
certain more than one of us would have plunged down on to the sharpened
stakes at the bottom. Some of the traps were so cleverly concealed that
only a Wanderobo could detect them. In places the forest was like the
stately aisles of a great shadowy cathedral, with giant cedars and
camphor-wood trees rising in towering columns high above where the
graceful festoons of liana and moss imparted an imposing scene of
vastness and tropical beauty. In such places the ground was clean and
springy to the footfall and the impression of a splendid solitude was
such as one feels in a great deserted cathedral. At times we crossed
matted and snaky-looking little streams that trickled through the
decaying vegetation, where the feet of countless elephants had worn deep
holes far down in the mud. Then, after long and circuitous marching, we
would find ourselves traversing spots where we had been an hour before.
[Drawing: _Elephant Pits_]
The elephant apparently moves about without much definition of purpose,
at least when he is idling away his time, and the trail we were
following led in all directions like a mystic maze. At this time I was
hopelessly lost, and if left alone could probably never have found my
way out again. So we quickened our steps lest the guides should get too
far ahead of us. In those cool depths of the forest, into which only
occasional shafts of sunlight filtered, the air was cold and damp, so
much so that even the old Wanderobo got cold. It made me cold to look at
his thin, old bare legs, but then I suppose his legs were as much
accustomed to exposure as my hands were, and it's all a matter of
getting used to it.
Our porters, especially those that were most heavily loaded, were
falling behind and there was grave danger of losing them. In fact, a
little later we did lose them. The trail became fresher and, to my
dismay, led downward again and into that hopeless mass of underbrush
which at this point extended some distance into the lower levels of the
forest. We could not see in any direction more than twenty-five
feet--except above. If our lives had depended on it we could not have
penetrated the dense matted barriers of vegetation on each side of the
narrow trail. The bare thought of meeting an elephant in such a place
sent a cold chill down the back. If he happened to be coming toward us
our only hope was in killing him before he could charge twenty-five
feet, and, if we did kill him, to avoid being crushed by his body as it
plunged forward. Without question it was the worst place in the world to
encounter an elephant. And I prayed that we might get into more open
forest before we came up with the ones we were trailing. You can't
imagine how earnestly we all joined in that prayer.
It was at this unpropitious moment that we heard--startlingly near--the
sharp crash of a tusk against a tree somewhere just ahead. It was a most
unwelcome sound. There was no way of determining where the elephant was,
for we were hemmed in by solid walls of bush and could not have seen an
elephant ten feet on either side of the narrow trail. We also didn't
know whether he was coming or going or whether he was on our trail or
some other one of the maze of trails.
We quickly prepared for the worst. With our three heavy guns we crouched
in the trail, waiting for the huge bulk of an elephant to loom up before
us. Then came another thunderous crash to our right--and it seemed
scarcely fifty yards away. Then a shrill squeal of a startled elephant
off to our left and still another to the rear. Some elephants had
evidently just caught our scent, and if the rest of the elephants became
alarmed and started a stampede through the bush the situation would
become extremely irksome for a man of quiet-loving tendencies. The
thought of elephants charging down those narrow trails, perhaps from two
directions at once, was one that started a copious flow of cold
perspiration. We waited for several years of intense apprehension. There
was absolute silence. The elephants also were evidently awaiting further
developments.
[Photograph: A Clearing in the Forest]
[Photograph: A Kikuyu "Cotillion"]
[Photograph: Kikuyu Women Flailing Grain]
Then we edged slowly onward along the trail, approaching each turning
with extreme caution and then edging on to the next. Somewhere ahead and
on two sides of us there were real, live, wild elephants that probably
were not in a mood to welcome visitors from Chicago. How near they were
we didn't know--except that the sounds had come from very near,
certainly not more than a hundred yards--and we hoped that we might go
safely forward to where the bush would be thin enough to allow us to see
our surroundings. But there was no clearing. Several times a crash of
underbrush either ahead or to one side brought us to anxious attention
with fingers at the trigger guards. At last, after what seemed to be
hours of nervous tension, we came to a crossing of trails, down which we
could see in four directions thirty or forty feet. A large tree grew
near the intersection of the trails, and here we waited within reach of
its friendly protection. It was much more reassuring than to stand
poised in a narrow trail with no possibility of sidestepping a charge.
We waited at the crossing for further sounds of the elephants--waited
for some time with rifles ready and then gradually relaxed our taut
nerves. A line of porters with their burdens were huddled in one of the
trails awaiting developments. I took a picture of the situation and had
stood my rifle against the tree, and sat down to whisper the situation
over. All immediate danger seemed to have passed. It seemed to, but it
hadn't.
[Drawing: _The Porters Came Down the Trail_]
Like a sudden unexpected explosion of a thirteen-inch gun there was a
thundering crash in the bushes behind the porters, then a perfect
avalanche of terrified porters, a dropping of bundles, a wild dash for
the protection of the tree, and a bunch of the most startled white men
ever seen on Mount Kenia. I reached the tree in two jumps, and three
would have been a good record. The crashing of bushes and small trees at
our elbows marked the course of a frenzied or frightened elephant, and
to our intense relief the sounds diminished as the animal receded. I
don't think I was ever so frightened in my life. But I had company. I
didn't monopolize all the fright that was used in those few seconds of
terror.
We then decided that there was no sane excuse for hunting elephants
under such conditions. We at least demanded that we ought to see what we
were hunting rather than blindly stumble through dense bush with
elephants all around us. So we beat a masterly retreat, not without two
more serious threats from the hidden elephants. A boy was sent up a tree
to try to locate the elephants, but even up there it was impossible to
distinguish anything in the mass of vegetation around. We fired guns to
frighten away the animals, but at each report there was only a restless
rustle in the brush that said that they were still there and waiting,
perhaps as badly scared as we were.
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.
[Drawing: _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.
That night we camped in a little circular clearing which the Akeleys
called "Tembo Circus," for it was near this same clearing that one of
their large elephants had been killed three years before, and in the
clearing the skin had been prepared for preservation. All about us
stretched the vast forest, full of strange night sounds and spectral in
the darkness. In the morning we awoke in a dense cloud and did not break
camp until afternoon. Our Kikuyu and Wanderobo guides were sent out with
promises of liberal backsheesh to find fresh trails, but they returned
with unfavorable reports, so we marched back to the main camp again.
Thus ended our Kenia elephant experience, for a letter from Colonel
Roosevelt, asking Mr. Akeley if he could come to Nairobi for a
conference on their elephant group, led to our departure from the Mount
Kenia country.
The other two elephant experiences were much more spectacular and
perhaps are worthy of a separate story.