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 CHAPTER II

ELEPHANT FRIENDS AND FOES

I have sat in the top of a tree in the middle of a herd a quarter of a mile from a native village in Uganda in a last desperate effort to inspect the two hundred and fifty elephants which had been chevying me about so fast that I had not had a chance to see whether there were any desirable specimens among them or not. I have spent a day and a night in the Budongo Forest in the middle of a herd of seven hundred elephants. I have stood on an ant-hill awaiting the rush of eleven elephants which had got my wind and were determined to get me. I have spent a day following and fighting an old bull which took twenty-five shots of our elephant rifles before he succumbed. And once also I had such close contact with an old bull up on the slopes of Mt. Kenia that I had to save myself from being gored by grabbing his tusks with my hands and swinging in between them.

I have spent many months studying elephants in Africa—on the plains, in the forests, in the bamboo, up on the mountains. I have watched them in herds and singly, studied their paths, their feeding grounds, everything about them I could, and I have come to the conclusion that of all the wild animals on this earth