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Updated: June 1, 2025
In the meantime, I sent one of the elephant-hunters to look for the well, intending, if water was to be obtained, to rest here for the night. A pool was found, but the water was thick and muddy, and the negro discovered near it the remains of a fire recently extinguished, and the fragments of provisions, which afforded a proof that it had been lately visited, either by travellers or banditti.
They took along a good crew, several bold elephant-hunters, an author to write their adventures, an artist to sketch the Huggermuggers, Little Jacket's six comrades, grappling-irons, nets, ropes, harpoons, cutlasses, pistols, guns, the two young elephants, the lion, the giraffe, the monkeys, and the parrots.
As I approached them, I was in hopes they were elephant-hunters; and by way of opening the conversation inquired if they had shot anything, but without returning an answer one of them ordered me to dismount, and then, as if recollecting himself, waved with his hand for me to proceed.
In an interview with him, I made him understand that nothing should drive me back to Khartoum, but that, as I was now helpless, I begged him to give me ten elephant-hunters; that I would pay one-half of their wages, and amuse myself in hunting and exploring in any direction until the following year, he to take the ivory; by which time I could receive thirty black soldiers from Khartoum, with whom I should commence my journey to the lake.
The best and only really great elephant-hunters of the White Nile are the Bagara Arabs, on about the 13 degree N. lat. These men hunt on horseback, and kill the elephant in fair fight with their spears. The lance is about fourteen feet long, of male bamboo; the blade is about fourteen inches long by nearly three inches broad; this is as sharp as a razor.
I accordingly rode past, and had with some difficulty crossed a deep rivulet, when I heard somebody holloa, and looking behind, saw those I had taken for elephant-hunters running after me, and calling out to me to turn back.
The ordinary tourist omits Sumatra from his itinerary. Occasional elephant-hunters penetrate the dense forests of the interior, and engineers or tobacco-planters flock to the monotonous levels of the eastern coast, but the glorious Western Highlands, the Sumatran Bovenland, is seldom visited. Warlike Acheen, for ever at feud with the Dutch Government, is forbidden ground to the European traveller.
In a short time we met the men themselves, two elephant-hunters who had followed the herd on foot, with the sword as their only weapon: they had found the elephants, which had obtained their wind and had retreated. The Sheik Abou Do was furious at the audacity of these two Hamrans, who had dared to disturb our hunting-grounds, and he immediately ordered them to return to Geera.
The meal over and the after-dinner cigar duly smoked, Sir Reginald and his companion elephant-hunters having declared that they were too tired to enjoy any further sport that day, the professor and Mildmay bade the rest of the party good-night, and, taking their rifles, set out for the margin of the lake.
The elephant-hunters seldom go out singly a party of four or five join together, and having each furnished himself with powder and ball, and a quantity of corn-meal in a leather bag sufficient for five or six days' provision, they enter the most unfrequented parts of the wood, and examine with great care everything that can lead to the discovery of the elephants.
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