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
