Vainly I called upon them to go easily; their moment of excitement was at its full pitch, and they were soon out of sight among the trees and underwood, taking all the spare guns, except the four-ounce rifle, which, weighing twenty-one pounds, effectually prevented the bearer from leaving us behind.
What added materially to the annoyance of losing the spare guns was the thoughtless character of the advance.

I felt sure that these fellows would outrun the position of the elephants, which, if they had continued in a direct route, should have entered the jungle within 300 yards of our first station.
We had slipped, and plunged, and struggled over this distance, when we suddenly were checked in our advance.

We had entered a small plot of deep mud and rank grass, surrounded upon all sides by dense rattan jungle.

This stuff is one woven mass of hooked thorns: long tendrils, armed in the same manner, although not thicker than a whip-cord, wind themselves round the parent canes and form a jungle which even elephants dislike to enter.

To man, these jungles are perfectly impervious.
Half-way to our knees in mud, we stood in this small open space of about thirty feet by twenty.