The commander of the _Panther_ was reluctant to have his officers go big-game hunting in the interior and, as he said, risk their lives uselessly. We were forbidden to take rifles on shore with us. But a comrade and I smuggled our rifles out, and took a big canoe upstream. With a dozen Negroes at the paddles, we raced against the sluggish current of the Mungo River, between giant, overhanging walls of trees. After eighteen hours, we reached Mundame. Our only worth-while trophy so far was a crocodile--and crocodiles are hard to shoot, too, as they dive with surprising speed. We had also shot a few vultures, sea eagles, and monkeys. We could not quite bring ourselves to eat the flesh of the monkeys, which the natives consider a great delicacy. When wounded, a monkey cries and screams just like a child, but when skinned it loses its half-human appearance and looks like a big squirrel, or a woodchuck. At Mundame the black people greeted us with eager cries: "Massa, massa, plenty elephant." We proceeded on an elephant hunt in which my friend Bryer and I must have cut rather poor figures as sportsmen! Our chase of the great beasts did not turn out to be quite what we had expected. The elephants had broken into a Negro's plantation, and were not far away. With each a Negro as a guide, we went into the thicket of banana plants. "Massa," my guide whispered eagerly, "massa, look, elephant." I looked but could see no elephant. My guide kept repeating in tones of excitement that gradually turned into despair. "Elephant, massa, look, elephant!" I could have looked for a year and would not have seen the fraction of gray wall revealed between the leaves. Finally, the elephant began to move, and I saw at least the great disturbance among the foliage. I walked toward it, hoping to find some definite point of the beast's anatomy to shoot at. The elephant moved away at about the same speed, and I could get no closer to it. I came upon one of those huge ant hills you find in Africa, and clambered upon it. I now had a much better view. "Ostriches!" I exclaimed.