spread blankets for me to sit on and so I would snuggle up to the fire, yawning and shivering, and getting smoke into my eyes until I cursed the day that I ever came on an ibex hunt. Meantime one coolie would be massaging my legs, another would be tying on my grass shoes while yet a third would bring me a breakfast that I was almost too sleepy to eat, and after all that the day's hunt proved to be merely a repetition of the last.

We made a very long detour and would have gotten very close to the ibex but he heard the crunch of the snow and from below us he circled unseen and then suddenly peeped down at us over a ledge about four hundred yards away. I looked at him through the telescope for about the onehundredth time, and wondered, as I gazed at the curious horns, if I would ever have the pleasure of seeing them in camp. Then he went right up to the very summit of the mountain. I sank back into the snow, very disgusted with it all for it looked well-nigh hopeless. From below the roar of unseen waters racing down the chasm suddenly came up strong on the wind. For a moment the sound filled the air. Then it grew fainter and fainter and was swallowed up again in endless space just as the voice of a child is swept away and lost in a storm. The mountain-side was in silence.

Rahima did not want to look at me. He kept his eyes turned away and fingered his stick. I took out my field glasses. The ibex was struggling through deep snow up near the summits. I watched him till he lay down on a slab of bare rock. Rahima,' I said, 'what doing now?' 'See dem, see dem,' was his characteristic reply. 'Pleases now sitting,' he went on. 'Evening kail down coming for fooding.' And the ibex did come down that evening, and, though we were ready

for him, he fooled us again. We had waited for him too long and as a result we had to descend a very steep mountain in the dark - a somewhat hazardous proceeding.

The next day at last luck was with us. We found the old ibex asleep in the terrible chasm that divides the right wall of Abadabur Nullah into two halves. That place is a veritable gorge of death into which rocks are forever hurling themselves down the shelving gneiss that acts as a floor of the chasm. The ibex was lying down, some three hundred yards away, almost vertically beneath me. To shoot I literally had to lean over the edge, my shikari holding onto my legs as I fired, and, to say the least, I surprised myself by killing him. Several other ibex ran across the floor of the chasm when I fired. One male was almost hit by a falling rock and I saw him jump skillfully behind a projecting ledge as the rock went crashing by. Then for some time I watched them climb the wall on the far side. Now and then they got into very tight places that necessitated a careful study of the ground, followed by three or four flying leaps that nearly made my hair stand on end to see, and I burst out with a 'Gee! Did you see that Rahima?' Two small ibex were following their mother at the end of the line, until they came to a spot which they simply could not manœuvre. When they were getting left far behind, they showed some initiative and, turning back down into the chasm again, they came up by another route, going all the time just as fast as they could go until they caught up with the others.

When the excitement was over and I looked back at the fallen ibex, I hardly knew what to think. It would be impossible to describe the many, varied, and conflicting emotions that I have experienced in shooting game.

Sometimes it is great glee, sometimes regret, sometimes a combination of pity and sorrow and a strong distaste for the whole business. On this occasion I think there was a certain satisfied feeling of 'Well, at last.' At the same time a natural feeling of regret, for it seems that the longer the chase continues, the more of a friend the object of the chase becomes. You get to know him pretty well-his little tricks and habits, his favorite haunts and feeding grounds- and it is impossible therefore that one should experience only a feeling of glee when the big head has fallen and his battle is at an end.

II

In Peking I heard of Defosse, whose reputation as a man, guide, and hunter has traveled far. I set about then and there to try to secure his services and was so fortunate that by the first week of January, 1923, I was setting out with the great hunter for the jungles of Indo-China. Defosse is an old man of the jungle. For eighteen years he has made his living as a hunter, and he has a knowledge of the jungle that few men of to-day possess. A typical white man of the tropics, he has fought the fever all his life. He is thin and drawnlooking, and his eyes are heavy. Only his tremendous feet and hands tell of the man he might have been. But when his rifle is at his shoulder, steady as a rock, he is beautiful to see. As a young man he was 'first shot' of the French regiment in which he came to Indo-China, and his skill with the rifle has been increasing ever since. In the early days of his hunting he had many an accident. He has been on the horns of wild buffaloes, he has been caught by an elephant, he has been gored by a wild boar, and he has had to run for his life from a wounded tiger; yet these and other experiences have simply

made him a more clever and a more skillful hunter. On two occasions I had the rare pleasure of seeing Defosse in action and it is something I can never forget.

It was to Defosse that the Moys came with their troubles, for he spoke Annamite, Moy, English, and French with remarkable fluency. For the two months in the jungle we were always more or less surrounded by Moys who served us as coolie porters and trackers, and they were a constant source of interest. They are the original Malays of Indo-China and as far back as their traditions go they have lived in the interior. To the Moys the jungle is the whole world. In olden days a tribal war caused the erection of a mud wall as a boundary for the Moys and a defense against the Annamites who were invading the sea coast. The wall still exists and so successfully has it landlocked the Moys that even to-day, although some tribes live within 50 kilometres of the coast, they have absolutely no knowledge of the sea.

The Moys have one great god of the jungle, and subordinate gods for each different species of animal. In the event that they make a killing with their crossbows and poisoned arrows, a propitiation to the God of that species is necessary. In the case of an elephant, the propitiation lasts eight days and the ceremony takes on the form of a 'Kaniau,' or drunken debauch. It is held about the carcass of the dead animal. A Moy will never give any information as to the whereabouts of dangerous game, for surely the animal would know and revenge himself on that Moy. Thus at one of our camps, although the Moys found a fresh tiger's kill a short distance away, they never told us a thing about it till three days later when the kill was devoured and the tiger gone. To the Moys a tiger is 'Ông Cop'- Mr. Tiger - and is spo

ken of quietly and with great respect; but Mr. Elephant—‘Ông Bổ is rarely even mentioned.

The white man is something the Moys as yet cannot explain quite satisfactorily. He is a born master, can do anything he likes, and, for the reason that he does not have to trouble himself with propitiations, he is almost a sort of semi-god himself. And yet nothing that the white man does do the Moys consider wonderful. Any people who can build a contrivance that wood and water will cause to run at great speed, hauling any number of wagons, can do anything; and with that their wonder ceases. A rifle, a telescope, and such things do not even cause curiosity. 'Why!' they say simply, with a shrug of their shoulders, 'white man's work,' and that is the end of it. The Moys believe that a compass points to the game, and that when you want to return it points directly back to camp. No wonder the white man can find game and no wonder he can go straight back home through the jungle. There is nothing remarkable about it. It is 'white man's work.'

We had moved camp into good elephant country where there was plenty of 'sign' and for several days we had been hard at work burning down the long grass. During the night we had heard elephants trumpeting, and Defosse had expressed a feeling that on the morrow an elephant would be shot.

Elephants are very numerous in Indo-China, but, owing to the thick jungle they inhabit, it is extremely difficult to get them, unless you are so fortunate as to catch them in the open early or late. They come out to the watering holes during the night but usually beat a hasty retreat to the cool of the forest at the first sign of day. This is especially true in the dry season. So I must ask my reader to step with me for a moment into the jungle and to

VOL. 134— NO. 1

B

picture himself regretfully crawling out of bed into the pitch darkness of a cold misty morning. A dreary breakfast and we are glad to get under way. Dawn has just broken and the mist lies black and heavy over the forest. A few tall trees out in the open lift their heads above its surface. They are the trees of a dream, weird and unsupported, and their great black trunks disappear into the blacker mist below. The trail leads a way through the accursed elephant grass. It is wet and the cold clammy dew soaks us to the skin. We see fresh tiger tracks. The fellow has passed camp during the night.

As Kipling says, 'the dawn comes up like thunder,' and in a few minutes a sickly green disk arises over the rim of the great forest. The mist begins to move this way and that and the sun turns to livid orange and to pale yellow. The jungle cocks are crowing and the long-tailed peacocks are hurling their raucous notes over the open spaces as we step into the jungle. It is dark there, and cool, and dripping, and we cannot see our rifle-sights. Of a sudden there is a great shaking of branches overhead, and a flock of little gray monkeys runs away like squirrels through the tree tops; and so we push on through the jungle, the vines and giant creepers and thorny bushes catching at our clothing.

Very soon we come on the fresh tracks of a large elephant herd and the sensation and thrill that creep over us as we step gingerly about, examining these great tracks, is wonderful. For a long time the elephants had just been milling around this way and that. Then they separated into two herds, one going back deep into the jungle, the other circling out over the open spaces, through the elephant grass. These we follow and on the way we see the dancing-place of the elephants which Kipling describes in the Jungle

Book story of 'Little Tumai.' Grass and earth alike have been stamped to the hardness of cement. On and on we follow till the sun swings high, white and blistering. As we pass a narrow island of jungle that is surrounded by open grass I say to Defosse, 'Let's step into the shade and rest a while.'

It is an idea that, I must confess, is ever present when the sun is up and it merely requires a good opportunity as an excuse to effect it. Well, we do, and I have hardly lifted my canteen to my lips when we hear loud crashing close by. "The elephants,' whispers Defosse, in a tone which fairly sets me tingling inside. The two Moy natives show great alacrity in getting up a tree and then turn and grin down at us from their perch like a pair of monkeys. We make our way toward the sound.

In Defosse's language - I know that we are 'attacking the elephants.' Working into the interior of the patch of jungle we find that it opens up a bit for a distance of about forty yards. The elephants are not thirty yards from one end of this little glade. We can see the trees shaking, hear the breaking branches, and the dull flap of elephant ears, but to see the elephants is impossible. We make a circle back through the jungle behind to assure ourselves that we are not surrounded, and then return to the edge of the thick section of the jungle in which the elephants are browsing. Then Defosse explains that, since this strip of jungle is surrounded by open grass, my first shot will bring them racing back through the jungle in our direction as they will not dare to risk crossing the open. "Therefore,' he says, 'as soon as you shoot, we will run back to that big tree and that will give us thirty yards of clear jungle to kill in. Don't stop shooting until there are no more ele phants facing us and remember: not below the line of the eyes!'

It is getting exciting and I wait resting against a tree trying in vain to make out a head to shoot at. To be sure, I can occasionally see a trunk or a bit of a flapping ear, but it would be folly to risk a shot, especially as it seems to be merely a matter of time until a good opportunity presents itself. Then the wind changes. Just a puff of air is wafted through the jungle toward the elephants. Defosse swears. Suddenly there is tremendous crashing and all the trees in the jungle seem to be shaking. The crashing ceases and we hear the swishing of tall grass. 'Shoot in the air and run to the big tree.' I obey and Defosse and I run for the tree. At sound of the shots the elephants wheel and hurl themselves back into the jungle.

The terrific crashing grows louder. Defosse and I stand by the tree tense and ready. The elephants stop. "They are looking for trouble,' whispers Defosse. One moves on. He is not coming straight for us. He circles around and passes directly beneath the tree the Moys are sitting in. We can see the Moys, but so thick is the mass of creepers below that we cannot see the elephant and we do not dare go into the thick jungle and try to 'head' them. I can see the Moys looking straight down. If we shoot the elephant where he stands the Moys will have to step on his back getting down off the tree. For a moment I have visions of the elephant reaching up with his trunk and grabbing them. It would be so easy for him. Then he passes around us in a circle leaving an open trail behind him where before there was an impenetrable mass of creepers.

Now the other elephants come on. There is loud crashing in front and behind as the elephants smash their way through the forest. But they have located us perfectly by that first puff

of wind and they all circle by and move on and we do not get in one shot. The strip of jungle at this point is not more than seventy yards wide, and we are in the middle of it, and yet five elephants pass us in that narrow strip and we are unable to get in a single shot.

There is no use to follow the elephants on foot, so we start for camp. The sun is hotter than ever and the miles are long. I cannot help thinking how quickly things change. We were having such fun a short time ago and now it is back to the same old story of sweating along through the accursed sword grass under the doubly accursed broiling sun. Defosse stops to light his pipe and I hate him for stopping. How any man can stop to light a pipe under that sun I cannot understand. Then he shows me where he and a Belgian had been forced to kill five elephants; but I am not a bit interested in the elephants that somebody else has shot. Our elephants have slipped right through our fingers and the idea rankles.

Nevertheless I have had my first real elephant hunt and have enjoyed it tremendously. I have seen gigantic bodies that for all the world might have been mastodons smashing their way through a primeval forest and as

I look back on the scene I know that it is an impression that will not soon be forgotten. But we are getting near camp now and I hurry on ahead.

'What's the hurry?' asks Defosse. 'Beer,' I answer, and hurry faster and at the same time I laugh at myself. Such is the human being, I thought. But a few minutes before my whole system was concentrated on elephants and now-how ignominious-it seems to be equally concentrated on beer.

To-night as I write, the jungle moon is sailing a cloudy sea, and the Southern Cross stands over there on the rim of the great forest. The soft air flowing in among the black tree-trunks brings in the noises of the jungle - the bell of the sambur stag, the yelp of the hog deer, the sharp bark of the muntjac, the songs of night birds and crickets and lizards, and now in the distance the roar of angry elephants, Kipling's 'pin prick of sound in the darkness.' And Defosse 'l'empereur des forêts,' as the French call him, an old man of the jungle, with ninety-eight elephants and forty-five tiger notches on his gun waves a careless hand out into the night.

'And I have all that just for the asking,' he says. 'And I do not have to pay.'