NINE DAYS WITHOUT SEEING AN ELEPHANT. THE ROOSEVELT PARTY DEPARTS AND WE
MARCH FOR THE MOUNTAINS ON OUR BIG ELEPHANT HUNT. THE POLICEMAN OF THE
PLAINS
The Mount Elgon elephants have a very bad reputation. The district is
remote from government protection and for years the herds have been the
prey of Swahili and Arab ivory hunters, as well as poachers of all sorts
who have come over the Uganda border or down from the savage Turkana and
Suk countries on the north. As a natural consequence of this
unrestricted poaching the herds have been hunted and harassed so much
that most of the large bull elephants with big ivory have been killed,
leaving for the greater part big herds of cows and young elephants made
savage and vicious by their persecution. Elephant hunters who have
conscientiously hunted the district bring in reports of having seen
herds of several hundred elephants, most of which were cows and calves,
and of having seen no bulls of large size.
The government game license permits the holder to kill two elephants,
the ivory of each to be at least sixty pounds. This means a fairly large
elephant and may be either a bull or a cow. The cow ivory, however,
rarely reaches that weight and consequently the bulls are the ones the
hunters are after and the ones that have gradually been so greatly
reduced in numbers. The elephants of this district roam the slopes of
the mountains and often make long swinging trips out in the broad
stretches of the Guas Ngishu Plateau to the eastward, in all a district
probably fifty miles wide by sixty or seventy miles long.
The hunters who invade this section usually march north from the
railroad at a point near Victoria Nyanza, turn westward at a little
settlement called Sergoi, and continue in that direction until they
reach the Nzoia River. Naturally, these names will mean nothing to one
not familiar with the country, but perhaps by saying that the trip means
at least ten days of steady marching in a remote and unsettled country,
far from sources of supplies, I will be able to convey a faint idea of
how hard it is to reach the elephant country.
Our purpose in making this long trip of ten weeks or more was to try for
black-maned lion on the high plateau and to collect elephants for the
group that Mr. Akeley is preparing for the American Museum of Natural
History. The government gave him a special permit to collect such
elephants as he would require, two cows, a calf, a young bull, and, if
possible, two large bulls. One or more of these were to be killed by
Colonel Roosevelt and one by myself. It seemed promising that the cows,
calf, and young bull could be got on Mount Elgon, but the likelihood of
getting the big bulls was far from encouraging. Lieutenant-Governor
Jackson thought we might be successful if we directed our efforts to the
southeastern slopes of the mountain and avoided the northeastern slopes
along the River Turkwel, which had been hunted a good deal by sportsmen
and poachers. If we were unable to get the big bulls on Elgon it might
be necessary to make a special trip into Uganda for them. However, we
determined to try, and try we did, through eight weeks of hard work and
wonderful experiences in that remote district.
[Photograph: A Kikuyu Spearman]
[Photograph: The Porters Like Elephant Meat]
[Photograph: My Masai Sais and Gunbearers]
At Sergoi, the very outpost of crude civilization, we were warned not to
go up the southern side of the mountain on account of the natives that
live there. We were told that they were inclined to be troublesome. We
met Captain Ashton and Captain Black coming out after six weeks on the
northern slopes. They reported seeing big herds, but mostly cows and
calves. At Sergoi we also received word from Colonel Roosevelt and at
once marched to the Nzoia River, where we met him.
During our march we saw no elephants, but as we neared the river there
were fresh signs of elephant along the trail. It is strikingly
indicative of the "Roosevelt luck" that he saw, on the morning we met
him, the only elephants that he had seen in the district, and that
within twenty-four hours from that time he had killed three elephants
and Kermit one. Of this number two cows killed by Colonel Roosevelt were
satisfactory for the group, and also the calf killed by his son, Kermit.
This left one young bull and two large bulls still to be secured, and to
that end we addressed our efforts during the succeeding weeks.
For nine days we hunted the Nzoia River region, but without seeing an
elephant. There were kongoni, zebra, topi, waterbuck, wart-hogs,
reedbuck, oribi, eland, and Uganda cob, but scour the country as we
would, we saw no sign of elephant except the broad trails in the grass
and the countless evidences that they had been in the region some time
before. The country was beautiful and wholesome. There was lots of game
for our table, from the most delicious grouse to the oribi, whose meat
is the tenderest I have ever eaten. There were ducks and geese and
Kavirondo crane; and sometimes eland, as fine in flavor as that of the
prize steer of the fat-stock show. Then there were reedbuck and cob,
both of which are very good to eat. So our tins of camp pie and kippered
herring and ox tongue remained unopened and we lived as we never had
before.
When the day's hunt was over the sun in a splendid effort painted such
sublime sunsets above Mount Elgon as I had never dreamed of. And the
music of hundreds of African birds along the river's edge greeted us
with the cool, delightful dawn. Purely from an æsthetic standpoint, our
days on the Nzoia were ones never to be forgotten, while from the
standpoint of the man who loves to see wild game and doesn't care much
about killing it, the bright, clear days on the Nzoia were memorable
ones. The Roosevelt party went its way back to civilization; the
Spaniards, De la Huerta and the Duke of Peñaranda, came and made a
flying trip up the mountain for elephant, then returned and went their
way. The young Baron Rothschild came on to the plateau for a couple of
weeks and then disappeared. And still we lingered on, happy, healthy,
generally hungry, and intoxicated with the languorous murmur of Africa.
[Drawing: _With Sharp Stakes in Them_]
Then we marched for the mountain on our big elephant hunt. The details
of those twelve days of adventuring in districts, some of which were
probably never traversed before by white men, our experiences with the
natives, our climb up the side of the mountain and our camp in the
crater; our icy mornings, our ascent of the highest peak, and our
explorations of the ancient homes of the cave-dwellers--all are part of
a remarkable series of events that have nothing to do with an elephant
story. In the forests we saw numberless old elephant pits, and on the
grassy slopes there were mazes of elephants' trails, some so big that
hundreds of elephants must have moved along them. But we saw no
elephants. We scanned the hills for miles and tramped for days in ideal
elephant country, but our quest was all in vain. Then our food supplies
ran low, our last bullock was killed, and we hurried back to the base
camp on the river, a hungry, tired band of a hundred and twenty men.
The matter of provisioning a large number of porters far from the
railroad is a serious one. In addition to carrying the _safari_ outfit,
the porters must carry their _posho_, or cornmeal ration, and it is
impossible for them to carry more than a limited number of days'
rations. So the farther one gets from the base of supplies the more
difficult it is to move, and a relay system must be employed. Porters
must be sent back for food, often six or eight days; or else a bullock
wagon must be used for that purpose. In our _safari_ we used two wagons,
drawn by thirty oxen, to supplement the porters in keeping up food
supplies, and even by so doing there were times when rations ran low. In
such times we would shoot game for them, either kongoni or zebra, both
of which are considered great delicacies by the black man.
However, this is not telling about my memorable elephant experiences in
the Guas Ngishu Plateau.
We got back to the Nzoia River on December third. On the fifteenth,
after many more unsuccessful attempts to get in touch with a herd, Mr.
Akeley and I resolved to try the mountain again. We thought that perhaps
the elephants might have moved northward along the eastern slope, and so
we thought we'd push clear up to the Turkwel River and find out beyond
question. We outfitted for an eight days' march, carried only one tent
and a small number of good porters. Only the absolute necessaries were
taken, for we expected to move fast and hard. The first day we marched
eight hours, crossed the Nzoia River, and by a curious chance at once
struck a fresh trail which was diagnosed as being only a few hours old.
The bark torn from trees was fresh and still moist; the leaves of the
branches that had been broken off as the elephants fed along the way
were still unwithered, and the flowers that had been crushed down by the
great feet of the herd had lost little of their freshness and fragrance.
The trail led us first in one direction, then in another; sometimes it
was a big trail that plowed through the long grass like a river, with
little tributaries branching in and out where the individual members of
the herd had swerved out of the main channel to feed by the way. And
sometimes when all the herd were feeding, the main trail disappeared, to
be replaced by a maze of lesser trails leading in all directions. But by
the skilful tracking of our gunbearers the main trail would be found
again some distance onward. We followed the trail for hours, and then,
night coming on, we went into camp near a small stream, choked with
luxuriant vegetation. Akeley thought he heard a faint squeal of an
elephant far off, and while the porters made camp we went on for a mile
or so to investigate. But no further sounds indicated the proximity of
the herd.
Early the next morning we took up the trail again, and in less than an
hour my Masai sais pointed off to a distant slope a couple of miles
away, where a black line appeared. It looked like an outcropping of
rock. Akeley looked at it and exclaimed, "By George, I believe he's got
them!" and a moment later, after he had directed his glasses on the
distant spot, he said briskly, "That's right, they're over there." And
so, for the first time, after having scanned suspicious-looking spots in
the landscape for weeks and always with disappointment, I saw a herd of
real live elephants. To the naked eye they looked more like little
shifting black beetles than anything else, but in the glasses they were
plainly revealed with swaying bodies and flapping ears and swinging
trunks.
In elephant hunting the first important thing to consider is the wind,
for the elephant is very keen-scented and is quick to detect a breath of
danger in the breeze. Fortunately we had seen them in time. If we had
gone ahead a few hundred yards they would have got our wind and gone
away in alarm, but this had not occurred. We could see that they were
feeding quietly and without the slightest evidence of uneasiness.
[Photograph: Some Kikuyu Belles]
[Photograph: Wanderobo Guides]
We left our horses and the porters under a big tree and told the latter
to come on if they heard any firing; otherwise, they were to await our
return. Then, with only our gunbearers and a man carrying Akeley's large
camera, we circled in a wide detour until we were safely behind the
elephants. The wind continued favorable, and we cautiously approached
the brow of a hill near where we had last seen them. They had
disappeared, but their trail was as easy to follow as an open road.
Before reaching the brow of the next hill one of the gunbearers was sent
up a tree to reconnoiter the country beyond.
"_Hapa_," he whispered, as he carefully climbed down and indicated with
his hand that they were near. Again we swung in a wide circle and came
over the brow of the next hill. There, four or five hundred yards away,
was the herd of elephants, standing idly under the low trees that
studded the opposite slope. There were between forty and fifty of them,
and from the number of _totos_, or calves, we assumed that many of the
big ones were cows. We studied the herd for some minutes, estimating the
ivory and trying in vain to pick out the bulls. There is very little
difference between the appearance of a cow and a bull elephant when the
latter has only moderate-sized tusks. Usually the tusks of the male are
heavier and thicker, but except for this distinction there is very
little noticeable difference between the two. Of course, an elephant
with gigantic tusks is at once known to be a bull, but if he has small
tusks it is a matter of considerable guesswork.
[Drawing: _Two Kongoni on Guard_]
We could not tell which ones of this herd were bulls, but assumed that
there must surely be several small-sized or young bulls among them. We
decided to go nearer, knowing that the elephant's eyesight is very poor,
and with such a favoring wind his sense of smell was useless. It seemed
amazing that they did not see us as we walked up the slope toward them.
When a couple of hundred yards away we climbed a tree to study them some
more. They were in three separate groups, each of which was clustered
sleepy and motionless under the trees. They had ceased feeding and had
evidently laid up for their midday rest, although the hour was hardly
ten in the morning.
From our "observation tower" in the tree we studied the three groups as
well as we could. So far as we could judge there were at least three
bulls of medium size, but as we looked those three lazily moved off
toward the group on the extreme left. At that time we were within about
a hundred yards of the nearest group with the wind still favorable, and
except for one thing we might easily have crept up through the grass to
within thirty or forty yards. Directly between us and the elephants were
two kongoni, one lying down and the other alert and erect.
[Drawing: _The Policemen of the Plains_]
The kongoni is the policeman of the plains. He is the self-appointed
guardian of all the other animals, and for some strange, unselfish
reason, he always does sentinel duty for the others. His eyes are so
keen that he sees your hat when you appear over the horizon two miles
away, and from that moment he never loses sight of you. If you approach
too near he whistles shrilly, and every other animal within several
hundred yards is on the alert and apprehensive. The kongoni often risks
his own life to warn other herds of animals of the approach of danger,
and if I were going to write an animal story I'd use the kongoni as my
hero. The hunters hate him for the trouble he gives them, but a
fair-minded man can not help but recognize the heroic, self-sacrificing
qualities of the big, awkward, vigilant antelope. Why these two
sentinels had not seen us is still and always will be a mystery, but it
is certain that they had not.
At the same time we knew that any attempt to approach nearer would alarm
them and they in turn would sound the shrill tocsin of warning to the
unsuspecting elephant herd, in which event we might have to track the
elephants for miles until they settled down again. So we cautiously
climbed down, retreated below the edge of the hill, and worked our way
up in the lee of the group farthest to our left in the expectation of
finding the three bulls. From tree to tree, and in the protection of
large ant-hills, we moved forward until we were less than fifty yards
from the elephants. Then we studied them again, but could not locate the
bulls.
Probably at this time something may have occurred to make the elephants
nervous. Perhaps the warning cry of a bird or the suspicious rustling of
our footsteps in the tall grass, but at any rate the herd began to move
slowly away. Two of the larger groups marched solemnly down the slope
away from us and the other disappeared among the low scrub trees to our
right. We followed the two larger groups and soon were again within a
few yards of them. An ant-hill four or five feet high gave us some
protection, and over the top of this we watched the enormous animals as
they stood under the trees ahead of us. While watching these two large
groups we forgot about the one that had disappeared to the right.
Suddenly one of the gunbearers whispered a warning and we turned to see
this group only a few yards from us and bearing directly down toward the
ant-hill where we crouched in the grass. They had not yet seen us, but
it seemed a miracle that they did not. If one of us had moved in the
slightest degree they would have charged into us with irresistible
force. We held our guns and our breath while these big animals, by a
most fortunate chance, passed by us to the windward of the ant-hill, not
more than thirty feet away. If they had passed to the leeward side they
would have got our wind and trouble would have been unavoidable. I took
a surreptitious snap-shot of them after they had passed by, and for the
first time in some minutes took a long breath.
Then we circled the herd again and came up to them. They were now
thoroughly uneasy. They knew that some invisible hostile influence was
abroad in the land, but they could not locate in which direction it lay.
We saw the sensitive trunks feeling for the scent and saw the big ears
moving uneasily back and forth. One large cow with a broken tusk was
facing us, vaguely conscious that danger lay in that direction. And
then, by some code of signals known only to the elephant world, the
greater number of elephants moved off down the slope and up the opposite
slope. Only the big, aggressive cow and four or five smaller animals
remained behind as a rear-guard. She stood as she had stood for some
moments, gazing directly at us and nervously waving her ears and trunk.
[Drawing: _The Rear-guard_]
Akeley climbed to the top of an ant-hill and made some photographs
showing the big cow and her companions in the foreground, while off on
the neighboring hillside three distinct groups of elephants were in
view. The latter were thoroughly alarmed and moved away very swiftly for
some distance and then came to a pause. The big cow and her attendants
then moved off, feeling that the retreat had been successfully effected.
Once more we followed them and came up to them, and then once more we
were flanked by a number of elephants that had previously disappeared
over the hill. They had swung around and were returning directly toward
where we stood, unsuspecting.
We barely had time to fall back to some small bushes, where we waited
while the flanking party approached. They came almost toward us, and
when only about fifty feet away I ventured a photograph, feeling that,
if successful, it would be the closest picture ever made of a herd of
wild elephants. I used a Verascope, a small stereoscopic French machine
whose "click" is almost noiseless. The elephants advanced and we huddled
together with rifles ready in the patch of bushes. It seemed a certainty
that they would charge, and that if our bullets could not turn them we
would be completely annihilated. But as yet there was no sign that they
saw us, or, if they did, they could not distinguish our motionless forms
from the foliage of the scrub.
At last, the foremost elephant, barely thirty feet from us, came to the
trail in the grass by which we had retreated when we first saw them. The
trunk, sweeping ahead of it as if feeling for the scent of danger,
paused an instant as it reached the trail and then the animal drew back
sharply as though stung. Then it whirled about and the herd went
crashing away through the sparse undergrowth. It was a time of the
utmost nervous tension, and I don't believe the human system could
undergo a prolonged strain of that severity.
[Drawing: _It Started Back as Though Stung_]
During all this time we had not succeeded in positively locating a bull
elephant. Of all the forty-four elephants that were visible at any one
time, there was not one that we could feel safe in identifying as the
elephant needed for the group. Three more times we stalked the herd to
very close range, but they were now so restless that nothing could be
ascertained. So finally we decided to get ahead of them and watch them
as they passed us, but just as we had reached a point where they were
approaching, the two kongoni gave a shrill alarm and the entire herd
made off in tremendous haste. Later, on our way back to camp, we came up
with one group of six or seven, but they seemed too angry and aggressive
to take needless chances with, so we watched them a while and then left
them behind.
During all that day we were with the herd nearly five hours, five hours
of intense nervous strain, during which time there was never a moment
when we were not in some danger of discovery. But in spite of the
aggressive bearing of some of them at one time or another, I had the
feeling that the elephants would run away from us the instant they
definitely determined where we were. And it was while laboring under
this impression that I met my second Mount Elgon herd of elephants and
learned by bitter experience that the impression was wholly false. But
that is still another story, the story of being charged five times in
one day by angry elephants, and how I killed a bull elephant for the
Akeley group.