a place on
the river's bank previously untouched by man, where there was a
stretch of beach, and then a higher level with trees and tall
grasses. Driven deep in this beach were the footprints of a large
elephant. They looked as though some one had amused himself by
sinking a bucket in the mud, and then pulling it out. For sixty
yards I followed the holes and finally lost them in a confusion of
other tracks. The place had been so trampled upon that it was beaten
into a basin. It looked as though every animal in the Kasai had met
there to hold a dance. There were the deep imprints of the hippos
and the round foot of the elephant, with the marks of the big toes
showing as clearly as though they had been scooped out of the mud
with a trowel, the hoofs of buffalo as large as the shoe of a cart
horse, and the arrow-like marks of the antelope, some in dainty
little Vs, others measuring three inches across, and three inches
from the base to the point. They came from every direction, down the
bank and out of the river; and crossed and recrossed, and beneath
the fresh prints that had been made that morning at sunrise, were
those of days before rising up sharply out of the sun-dried clay,
like bas-reliefs in stucco. I had gone ashore in a state of mind so
skeptical that I was as surprised as Crusoe at the sight of
footprints. It was as though the boy who did not believe in fairies
suddenly stumbled upon them sliding down the moonbeams. One felt
distinctly apologetic--as though uninvited he had pushed himself
into a family gathering. At the same time there was the excitement
of meeting in their own homes the strange peoples I had seen only in
the springtime, when the circus comes to New York, in the basement
of Madison Square Garden, where they are our pitiful prisoners,
bruising their shoulders against bars. Here they were monarchs of
all they surveyed. I was the intruder; and, looking down at the
marks of the great paws and delicate hoofs, I felt as much out of
place as would a grizzly bear in a Fifth Avenue club. And I behaved
much as would the grizzly bear. I rushed back for my rifle intent on
killing something.

The sun had just set; the moon was shining faintly: it was the
moment the beasts of the jungle came to the river to drink. Anfossi,
although he had spent three years in the Congo and had three years'
contract still to work out, was as determined to kill something as
was the tenderfoot from New York.

Sixty yards fr