ost promising, and we started on a little hunt the first afternoon
after arriving in camp.

[Drawing: _The Old Wanderobo Guide_]

We took one tent and about twenty porters, for when one starts on an
elephant trail there is no telling how long he will be gone or where he
may be led. We expected that we would have to climb up through the strip
of underbrush, and perhaps even as far up as the bamboos, in which event
we might be gone two or three days. In addition to the porters we had
our gunbearers and a couple of native guides. One of these was an old
Wanderobo, or man of the forest, who had spent his life in the solitudes
of the mountain and was probably more familiar with the trails than any
other man. He wore a single piece of skin thrown over his shoulders and
carried a big poisoned elephant spear with a barb of iron that remains
in the elephant when driven in by the weight of the heavy wooden shaft.
The barb was now covered with a protective binding of leaves. He led the
way, silent and mild-eyed and very naked, and the curious little
skin-tight cap that he wore made him look like an old woman. As we
proceeded, other natives attached themselves to us as guides, so that by
the time we were out half an hour there were four or five savages in the
van.

[Photograph: He Was a Very Important Sultan]

[Photograph: Saying Good-bye to Colonel Roosevelt]

[Photograph: A Visiting Delegation of Kikuyus]

No words can convey to the imagination the density of that first strip
of bush. It was like walking between solid walls of vegetation, matted
and tangled and bright with half-ripened blackberries. The walls were
too high to see over except as occasionally we could catch glimpses of
tree-tops somewhere ahead. We wound in and out along the tortuous path,
and it was also torture-ous, for the thorn bushes scratched our hands
and faces and even sent their stickers through the cloth into our knees.
The effect on the barelegged porters was doubtless much worse.

After a couple of hours of marching in those canons of vegetation we
entered the lower edge of the forest and left the underbrush behind. We
soon struck a fairly fresh elephant trail and for an hour wound in and
out among the trees, stumbling over "monkey ropes" and gingerly avoiding
old elephant pits. There were dozens of these, and if it had not been
for the fact that our old guide carefully piloted us past them I'm
certain more than one of us would have plunged down