We Went To Sleep With
The Intention Of Waking At Dawn Of Day, And Then Strolling
Quietly Along With Only Two Gun-Bearers Each, Who Were To Carry
My Four Double No 10's, While We Each Carried A Single Barrel For
Deer.
The earliest gray tint of morning saw us dressed and ready, the
rifles loaded, a preliminary cup of hot chocolate swallowed, and
we were off while the forest was still gloomy; the night seemed
to hang about it, although the sky was rapidly clearing above.
A noble piece of Nature's handiwork is that same Yallé forest.
The river flows sluggishly through its centre in a breadth of
perhaps ninety yards, and the immense forest trees extend their
giant arms from the high banks above the stream, throwing dark
shadows upon its surface, enlivened by the silvery glitter of the
fish as they dart against the current. Little glades of rank
grass occasionally break the monotony of the dark forest; sandy
gullies in deep beds formed by the torrents of the rainy season
cut through the crumbling soil and drain toward the river. Thick
brushwood now and then forms an opposing barrier, but generally
the forest is beautifully open, consisting of towering trees, the
leviathans of their race, sheltering the scanty saplings which
have spring from their fallen seeds. For a few hundred yards on
either side of the river the forest extends in a ribbon-like
strip of lofty vegetation in the surrounding sea of low scrubby
jungle. The animals leave the low jungle at night, passing
through the forest on their way to the river to bathe and drink;
they return to the low and thick jungle at break of day and we
hoped to meet some of the satiated elephants on their way to
their dense habitations.
We almost made sure of finding our friend of yesterday's trek,
and we accordingly kept close to the edge of the river, keeping a
sharp eye for tracks upon the sandy bed below.
We had strolled for about a mile along the high bank of the river
without seeing a sign of an elephant, when I presently heard a
rustle in the branches before me, and upon looking up I saw a lot
of monkeys gamboling in the trees. I was carrying my long
two-ounce rifle, and I was passing beneath the monkey-covered
boughs, when I suddenly observed a young tree of the thickness of
a man's thigh shaking violently just before me.
It happened that the jungle was a little thicker in his spot, and
at the same moment that I observed the tree shaking almost over
me, I passed the immense stem of one of those smooth-barked trees
which grow to such an enormous size on the banks of rivers. At
the same moment that I passed it I was almost under the trunk of
a single bull elephant, who was barking the stem with his tusk as
high as he could reach, with his head thrown back.
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