overed with salt
and rolled up. This is the preliminary step. Afterwards the skin, in
many places an inch in thickness, is pared down to a condition of
pliable thinness. This work requires hours or even days of hard labor by
many skilful wielders of the paring knife. The skulls and many of the
bones are saved when an animal is being preserved for a museum, but when
we arrived they had not yet been removed from the carcasses.

Our first object was to visit the hyena, which we found still protruding
from the side of his tomb. We photographed him from all angles, after
which he was disinterred and exposed to full view. He had certainly died
happy. He had literally eaten himself to death, and his body was so
distended from gorging that it was as round as a ball. Colonel Roosevelt
also photographed it, so that there will be no lack of evidence if the
incident ever reaches the controversial stage.

The third cow killed by Colonel Roosevelt was too small for the group,
so the skin was divided up as souvenirs of the day. We each got a foot,
fifteen square feet of skin, and one of the ears was saved for the
colonel.

We then started on the long two hours' ride back to the Roosevelt camp,
arriving there at a few minutes before one o'clock. We had not been in
camp ten minutes before a whirlwind came along, blew down a tent, and in
another minute was gone.

A big American flag was flying from the colonel's tent, and he came out
and, greeted us with the utmost cordiality and warmth. In honor of the
occasion he had put on his coat and a green knit tie. He was beaming
with pleasure at the result of the elephant hunt and seemed proud that
he was to have elephants in the American Museum group to be done by Mr.
Akeley. Heller was stuffing some birds and mice and was as slouchy,
deliberate and as full of dry humor as any one I've ever seen. He is a
character of a most likable type. Tarlton, small, with short cropped red
hair--a sort of Scotchman in appearance--is also a remarkable type. He
has a quiet voice, never raised in tone, and talks like the university
man that he is. He is a famous lion hunter and has killed numbers of
lions and elephants, but now he says he is through with dangerous game.

"I've had enough of it," he says.

The colonel, Tarlton, Heller, and Kermit were the only members of the
expedition present, Mearns and Loring having been engaged in a separate
mission up in the Kenia country for several weeks, while Cuni