by Jay Cassell
But at that very instant, before there was a moment’s time in which to reload, the thick bushes parted immediately on my left front, and through them surged the vast bulk of a charging bull elephant, the matted mass of tough creepers snapping like packthread before his rush. He was so close that he could have touched me with his trunk. I leaped to one side and dodged behind a tree trunk, opening the rifle, throwing out the empty shells, and slipping in two cartridges. Meanwhile Cuninghame fired right and left, at the same time throwing himself into the bushes on the other side. Both his bullets went home, and the bull stopped short in his charge, wheeled, and immediately disappeared in the thick cover. We ran forward, but the forest had closed over his wake. We heard him trumpet shrilly, and then all sound ceased.
The ‘Ndorobo, who had quite properly disappeared when this second bull charged, now went forward, and soon returned with the report that he had fled at speed, but was evidently hard hit, as there was much blood on the spoor. If we had been only after ivory we should have followed him at once; but there was no telling how long a chase he might lead us; and as we desired to save the skin of the dead elephant entire, there was no time whatever to spare. It is a formidable task, occupying many days, to preserve an elephant for mounting in a museum, and if the skin is to be properly saved, it must be taken off without an hour’s unnecessary delay.
So back we turned to where the dead tusker lay, and I felt proud indeed as I stood by the immense bulk of the slain monster and put my hand on the ivory. The tusks weighed a hundred and thirty pounds the pair. There was the usual scene of joyful excitement among the gun-bearers—who had behaved excellently—and among the wild bush people who had done the tracking for us; and, as Cuninghame had predicted, the old Masai Dorobo, from pure delight, proceeded to have hysterics on the body of the dead elephant. The scene was repeated when Heller and the porters appeared half an hour later. Then, chattering like monkeys, and as happy as possible, all, porters, gun-bearers, and ‘Ndorobo alike, began the work of skinning and cutting up the quarry, under the leadership and supervision of Heller and Cuninghame, and soon they were all splashed with blood from head to foot. One of the trackers took off his blanket and squatted stark naked inside the carcass the better to use his knife. Each laborer rewarded himself by cutting off strips of meat for his private store, and hung them in red festoons from the branches round about. There was no let up in the work until it was stopped by darkness.
Our tents were pitched in a small open glade a hundred yards from the dead elephant. The night was clear, the stars shone brightly, and in the west the young moon hung just above the line of tall tree tops. Fires were speedily kindled and the men sat around them, feasting and singing in a strange minor tone until late in the night. The flickering light left them at one moment in black obscurity, and the next brought into bold relief their sinewy crouching figures, their dark faces, gleaming eyes, and flashing teeth. When they did sleep, two of the ‘Ndorobo slept so close to the fire as to burn themselves; an accident to which they are prone, judging from the many scars of old burns on their legs. I toasted slices of elephant’s heart on a pronged stick before the fire, and found it delicious; for I was hungry, and the night was cold. We talked of our success and exulted over it, and made our plans for the morrow; and then we turned in under our blankets for another night’s sleep.
Next morning some of the ‘Ndorobo went off on the trail of Cuninghame’s elephant to see if it had fallen, but found that it had travelled steadily, though its wounds were probably mortal. There was no object in my staying, for Heller and Cuninghame would be busy for the next ten days, and would ultimately have to use all the porters in taking off and curing the skin, and transporting it to Neri; so I made up my mind to go down to the plains for a hunt by myself. Taking one porter to carry my bedding, and with my gun-bearers, and a Dorobo as guide, I struck off through the forest for the main camp, reaching it early in the afternoon. Thence I bundled off a safari to Cuninghame and Heller, with food for a week, and tents and clothing; and then enjoyed the luxury of a shave and a warm bath. Next day was spent in writing and in making preparations for my own trip. A Kikuyu chief, clad in a cloak of hyrax skins, and carrying his war spear, came to congratulate me on killing the elephant and to present me with a sheep. Early the following morning everything was in readiness; the bullnecked porters lifted their loads, I stepped out in front, followed by my led horse, and in ten hours’ march we reached Neri boma with its neat building, its trees, and its well-kept flower beds.
My hunting and travelling during the following fortnight will be told in the next chapter. On the evening of September 6th we were all together again at Meru boma, on the north-eastern slopes of Kenia—Kermit, Tarlton, Cuninghame, Heller, and I. Thanks to the unfailing kindness of the Commissioner, Mr. Horne, we were given full information of the elephant in the neighborhood. He had no ‘Ndorobo, but among the Wa-Meru, a wild martial tribe, who lived close around him, there were a number of hunters, or at least of men who knew the forest and the game, and these had been instructed to bring in any news.
We had, of course, no idea that elephant would be found close at hand. But next morning, about eleven, Horne came to our camp with four of his black scouts, who reported that three elephants were in a patch of thick jungle beside the shambas, not three miles away. Horne said that the elephants were cows, that they had been in the neighborhood some days, devastating the shambas, and were bold and fierce, having charged some men who sought to drive them away from the cultivated fields; it is curious to see how little heed these elephants pay to the natives. I wished a cow for the museum, and also another bull. So off we started at once, Kermit carrying his camera. I slipped on my rubber-soled shoes, and had my gun-bearers accompany me bare-footed, with the Holland and the Springfield rifles. We followed foot-paths among the fields until we reached the edge of the jungle in which the elephants stood.
This jungle lay beside the forest, and at this point separated it from the fields. It consisted of a mass of rank-growing bushes, allied to the cotton-plant, ten or twelve feet high, with only here and there a tree. It was not good ground in which to hunt elephant, for the tangle was practically impenetrable to a hunter save along the elephant trails, whereas the elephants themselves could move in any direction at will, with no more difficulty than a man would have in a hay-field. The bushes in most places rose just above their backs, so that they were completely hid from the hunter even a few feet away. Yet the cover afforded no shade to the mighty beasts, and it seemed strange that elephants should stand in it at mid-day with the sun out. There they were, however, for, looking cautiously into the cover from behind the bushes on a slight hill crest a quarter of a mile off, we could just make out a huge ear now and then as it lazily flapped.
On account of the wind we had to go well to one side before entering the jungle. Then in we went in single file, Cuninghame and Tarlton leading, with a couple of our naked guides. The latter showed no great desire to get too close, explaining that the elephants were “very fierce.” Once in the jungle, we trod as quietly as possible, threading our way along the elephant trails, which crossed and re-crossed one another. Evidently it was a favorite haunt, for the sign was abundant, both old and new. In the impenetrable cover it was quite impossible to tell just where the elephants were, and twice we sent one of the savages up a tree to locate the game. The last time the watcher, who stayed in the tree, indicated by signs that the elephant were not far off; and his companions wished to lead us round to where the cover was a little lower and thinner. But to do so would have given them our wind, and Cuninghame refused, taking into his own hands the management of the stalk. I kept my heavy rifle at the ready, and on we went, in watchful silence, prepared at any moment for a charge. We could not tell at what second we might catch our first glimpse at very close quarters of “the beast that hath between his eyes the serpent for a hand,” and when thus surprised the temper of “the huge earth-shaking beast” is sometimes of the shortest.
Cuninghame and Tarlton stopped for a moment to consult; Cuninghame stooped, and Tarlton mounted his shoulders and stood upright, steadying himself by my hand. Down he came and told us that he had seen a small tree shake seventy yards distant; although upright on Cuninghame’s shoulder he could not see the elephant itself. Forward we stole for a few yards, and then a piece of good luck befell us, for we came on the trunk of a great fallen tree, and scrambling up, we found ourselves perched in a row six feet above the ground. The highest part of the trunk was near the root, farthest from where the elephants were; and though it offered precarious footing, it also offered the best lookout. Thither I balanced, and looking over the heads of my companions I at once made out the elephant. At first I could see nothing but the shaking branches, and one huge ear occasionally flapping. Then I made out the ear of another beast, and then the trunk of a third was uncurled, lifted, and curled again; it showered its back with earth. The watcher we had left behind in the tree top coughed, the elephants stood motionless, and up went the biggest elephant’s trunk, feeling for the wind; the watcher coughed again, and then the bushes and saplings swayed and parted as three black bulks came toward us. The cover was so high that we could not see their tusks, only the tops of their heads and their backs being visible. The leader was the biggest, and at it I fired when it was sixty yards away, and nearly broadside on, but heading slightly toward me. I had previously warned every one to kneel. The recoil of the heavy rifle made me rock, as I stood unsteadily on my perch, and I failed to hit the brain. But the bullet, only missing the brain by an inch or two, brought the elephant to its knees; as it rose I floored it with the second barrel. The blast of the big rifle, by the way, was none too pleasant for the other men on the log and made Cuninghame’s nose bleed. Reloading, I fired twice at the next animal, which was now turning. It stumbled and nearly fell, but at the same moment the first one rose again, and I fired both barrels into its head, bringing it once more to the ground. Once again it rose—an elephant’s brain is not an easy mark to hit under such conditions—but as it moved slowly off, half stunned, I snatched the little Springfield rifle, and this time shot true, sending the bullet into its brain. As it fell I took another shot at the wounded elephant, now disappearing in the forest, but without effect.
On walking up to our prize it proved to be not a cow, but a good-sized adult (but not old) herd bull, with thick, short tusks weighing about forty pounds apiece. Ordinarily, of course, a bull, and not a cow, is what one desires, although on this occasion I needed a cow to complete the group for the National Museum. However, Heller and Cuninghame spent the next few days in preserving the skin, which I after gave to the University of California; and I was too much pleased with our luck to feel inclined to grumble. We were back in camp five hours after leaving it. Our gun-bearers usually felt it incumbent on them to keep a dignified bearing while in our company. But, the death of an elephant is always a great event; and one of the gun-bearers, as they walked ahead of us campward, soon began to improvise a song, reciting the success of the hunt, the death of the elephant, and the power of the rifles; and gradually, as they got farther ahead, the more lighthearted among them began to give way to their spirits and they came into camp frolicking, gambolling, and dancing as if they were still the naked savages that they had been before they became the white man’s followers.
Two days later Kermit got his bull. He and Tarlton had camped about ten miles off in a magnificent forest, and late the first afternoon received news that a herd of elephants was in the neighborhood. They were off by dawn, and in a few hours came on the herd. It consisted chiefly of cows and calves, but there was one big master bull, with fair tusks. It was open forest with long grass. By careful stalking they got within thirty yards of the bull, behind whom was a line of cows. Kermit put both barrels of his heavy double .450 into the tusker’s head, but without even staggering him; and as he walked off Tarlton also fired both barrels into him, with no more effect; then, as he slowly turned, Kermit killed him with a shot in the brain from the .405 Winchester. Immediately the cows lifted their ears, and began trumpeting and threatening; if they had come on in a body at that distance, there was not much chance of turning them or of escaping from them: and after standing stock still for a minute or two, Kermit and Tarlton stole quietly off for a hundred yards, and waited until the anger of the cows cooled and they had moved away, before going up to the dead bull. Then they followed the herd again, and Kermit got some photos which, as far as I know, are better than any that have ever been taken of wild elephant. He took them close up; at imminent risk of a charge.
The following day the two hunters rode back to Meru, making a long circle. The elephants they saw were not worth shooting, but they killed the finest rhinoceros we had yet seen. They saw it in an open space of tall grass, surrounded by lantana brush, a flowering shrub with close-growing stems, perhaps twenty feet high and no thicker than a man’s thumb; it forms a favorite cover for elephants and rhinoceros, and is well nigh impenetrable to hunters. Fortunately this particular rhino was outside it, and Kermit and Tarlton got up to about twenty-five yards from him. Kermit then put one bullet behind his shoulder, and as he whipped round to charge, another bullet on the point of his shoulder; although mortally wounded, he showed no signs whatever of being hurt, and came at the hunters with great speed and savage desire to do harm. Then an extraordinary thing happened. Tarlton fired, inflicting merely a flesh wound in one shoulder, and the big, fearsome brute, which had utterly disregarded the two fatal shots, on receiving this flesh wound, wheeled and ran. Both firing, they killed him before he had gone many yards. He was a bull, with a thirty-inch horn.
By this time Cuninghame and Heller had finished the skin and skeleton of the bull they were preserving. Near the carcass Heller trapped an old male leopard, a savage beast; its skin was in fine shape, but it was not fat, and weighed just one hundred pounds. Now we all joined, and shifted camp to a point eight or nine miles distant from Meru boma, and fifteen hundred feet lower among the foot-hills. It was much hotter at this lower level; palms were among the trees that bordered the streams. On the day we shifted camp Tarlton and I rode in advance to look for elephants, followed by our gun-bearers and half a dozen wild Meru hunters, each carrying a spear or a bow and arrows. When we reached the hunting grounds, open country with groves of trees and patches of jungle, the Meru went off in every direction to find elephant. We waited their return under a tree, by a big stretch of cultivated ground. The region was well peopled, and all the way down the path had led between fields, which the Meru women were tilling with their adze-like hoes, and banana plantations, where among the bananas other trees had been planted, and the yam vines trained up their trunks. These cool, shady banana plantations, fenced in with tall hedges and bordered by rapid brooks, were really very attractive. Among them were scattered villages of conical thatched huts, and level places plastered with cow dung on which the grain was threshed; it was then stored in huts raised on posts. There were herds of cattle, and flocks of sheep and goats; and among the burdens the women bore we often saw huge bottles of milk. In the shambas there were platforms, and sometimes regular thatched huts, placed in the trees; these were for the watchers, who were to keep the elephants out of the shambas at night. Some of the natives wore girdles of banana leaves, looking, as Kermit said, much like the pictures of savages in Sunday-school books.
Early in the afternoon some of the scouts returned with news that three bull elephants were in a piece of forest a couple of miles distant, and thither we went. It was an open grove of heavy thorn timber beside a strip of swamp; among the trees the grass grew tall, and there were many thickets of abutilon, a flowering shrub a dozen feet high. On this the elephant were feeding. Tarlton’s favorite sport was lion hunting, but he was also a first-class elephant hunter, and he brought me up to these bulls in fine style. Although only three hundred yards away, it took us two hours to get close to them. Tarlton and the “shenzis”—wild natives, called in Swahili (a kind of African
chinook) “washenzi”—who were with us, climbed tree after tree, first to place the elephants, and then to see if they carried ivory heavy enough to warrant my shooting them. At last Tarlton brought me to within fifty yards of them. Two were feeding in bush which hid them from view, and the third stood between, facing us. We could only see the top of his head and back, and not his tusks, and could not tell whether he was worth shooting. Much puzzled, we stood where we were, peering anxiously at the huge, half-hidden game. Suddenly there was a slight eddy in the wind, up went the elephant’s trunk, twisting to and fro in the air; evidently he could not catch a clear scent; but in another moment we saw the three great dark forms moving gently off through the bush. As rapidly as possible, following the trails already trampled by the elephants, we walked forward, and after a hundred yards Tarlton pointed to a big bull with good tusks standing motionless behind some small trees seventy yards distant. As I aimed at his head he started to move off; the first bullet from the heavy Holland brought him to his knees, and as he rose I knocked him flat with the second. He struggled to rise; but, both firing, we kept him down; and I finished him with a bullet in the brain from the little Springfield. Although rather younger than either of the bulls I had already shot, it was even larger. In its stomach were beans from the shambas, abutilon tips, and bark, and especially the twigs, leaves, and white blossoms of the smaller shrub. The tusks weighed a little over a hundred pounds the pair.
