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Updated: June 5, 2025
There was a long wait and still the wind continued in gusts. At last it was determined that we might as well settle down for better conditions, so Mrs. Akeley was lifted out and we waited impatiently for the wind to die down. At last it died down, all was hurriedly prepared for the ascension, and Mrs. Akeley took her place again in the basket.
First of all, at the risk of repeating what has been written so often before, I will say a few words about the personnel of a safari, such as the one I was with. There were four white people in our expedition Mr. and Mrs. Akeley, Mr. Stephenson, and myself. Mr.
Once more we swung across from branch to branch over the swift waters of the river and reached the other bank where lay the mountainous bulk of the dead elephant. It was a young bull about eight feet high and with two well-shaped tusks twenty-two inches long in the open, or approximately thirty-eight inches in all. Sulimani was sent to notify Mr. Akeley and Mr.
Carl Akeley, in his quest for a really large male elephant for the American Museum found and looked over a thousand males without finding one that was really fine and typical. All the photographs of elephant herds that were taken by Kermit Roosevelt and Akeley show a striking absence of adult males and of females with long tusks.
For nearly two hours we followed, Akeley tracking with remarkable precision. Sometimes the trail was faint and merged with older trails, but by looking carefully the fresh trail was kept. Soon we began to see newly broken branches from the trees which indicated that the elephants were getting quieted down and were beginning to feed.
Several porters were left where the lions could constantly see them, while we three, Akeley, Stephenson and I, with our six gunbearers, worked around the base of the hill until we were able to climb up on the crest of it, being thus constantly screened from view of the lions. At the crest was an abrupt outcropping of blackened rocks, where we stopped to locate the two animals.
Akeley went out only once, had a night of thrilling experiences, and killed a large male lion. The lion appeared early in the evening and her first shot just grazed the backbone. An inch higher and it would have missed, but as it was, the mere grazing of the backbone paralyzed the animal, preventing its escape.
Akeley washed up in the colonel's tent, while Stephenson and I used Kermit's tent, and as we washed and scrubbed away the memories of the elephant carcasses the colonel stood in the door and talked to us. We told him that each of us had taken a drink of Scotch whisky the evening before in honor of the elephants the first drinks we had taken for weeks.
Thus ended our Kenia elephant experience, for a letter from Colonel Roosevelt, asking Mr. Akeley if he could come to Nairobi for a conference on their elephant group, led to our departure from the Mount Kenia country. The other two elephant experiences were much more spectacular and perhaps are worthy of a separate story. The Mount Elgon elephants have a very bad reputation.
And with each yard of advance came the realization that we were coming to an inevitable show-down with that lion. Akeley and I were in with the beaters, Stephenson was beyond the patch of grass to intercept the lion should it break forth, from cover. It was not until we had nearly traversed the entire patch of reeds that the lion was found.
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