We reach the water, and the babies throw themselves in dramatically, writhing around happily in the current and climbing on top of each other. One rubs her eye with the tip of her trunk. Bennie isn't crazy about water. He spent his first 15 years in a tiny enclosure in the Fort Worth Zoo, and didn't figure out he was an elephant for a couple of years after he left. He is content to stand near the water and take an occasional dip with his trunk.

African elephants: gentle, courteous, and smart.

Bennie's shoulders, as big as pumpkins, work up and down with his slow, rolling walk. His ears are the size of raincoats. His skin feels like the parched desert floor. When he's happy, he makes a rumbling sound like a not-quite-dormant volcano.

Then he decides it's time for a snack. Fronting up to a mopane tree, he wraps his trunk around a limb the size of a birch tree and breaks it off with a snap that smacks into my eardrums and generally puts things in perspective. He strips it with his trunk, munches with audible contentment, and decides to catch up to the rest of the elephants.

His gait approaches a trot. The three of us on his back wobble around. "Ee es eggzellerating," says the Frenchman behind me. The man is speaking the truth. Far below us, the babies barrel along, swinging their trunks. The babies love Bennie: In all his tonnage there isn't an ounce of imperiousness. Moore has likened him to an old auntie. While Abu has starred in movies and commercials under Moore's tutelage, Bennie isn't exactly star material. He is always an extra. "He's there," says Moore, "but he isn't there."

But, the natural leader of the elephants, is ahead of us. He routinely picks up riders hats that have blown off in the wind and delivers them straight back with his trunk. So when Moore points to a tortoise on the ground, he reaches for it. One touch with his trunk tells him it's alive. He retracts it with the distaste only a vegetarian could muster, backs up and hurries down the trail. As soon as he's gone, five baby elephants converge over the hapless tortoise in imitation of Abu, their trunks hovering and wondering over it, baggy rear ends facing us. Eventually they reach the same conclusion as Abu and trundle off through the trees.

Those people who swear that negative ions put you in a good mood should try being around a family of elephants. They are the most effective natural tranquilizers I've ever seen. Their long-lashed hazel eyes are windows to large and benign souls that seem ready to befriend and forgive a species that seems intent on snuffing them out over much of the continent. African elephant populations plummeted from 1.3 million in 1979 to about 600,000 ten years later. The damage was concentrated in eastern and central Africa. Richard Leakey, the charismatic director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, brought the slaughter to the attention of the Western world. This spurred the formal recognition of the African elephant as threatened with extinction, and led to a ban in the trade of elephant products.

I sit in camp, watching the lavender sky darken to violet. I am talking to Randall Moore, who has dedicated his life to training and conserving elephants. Iconoclastic and ponytailed, he is speaking heresy.

"The elephant issue is not an issue," he says. "It's not an endangered species. Six hundred thousand of anything is not an endangered species."

Trophy hunting is even more expensive than riding around on elephants. A Houston surgeon will pay up to $1,400 a day to track and kill game. Unquestionably elitist, trophy hunting can also generate prodigious amounts of money for wildlife conservation as well as jobs for quite a few people: Trackers and guides for hunting outnumber clients by two to one (overall, companies' staff-to-client ratios are three to one). The surgeon will pay the government $245 for a license to kill a Cape buffalo; citizens of Botswana can get one for a few dollars. The bottom line here, as well as among other outfitters and conservationists, is that wildlife must pay its way by generating money and jobs, or its habitat will be turned over to other uses.

Outside, Matin's streets are lined with goats and loose-limbed local residents walking to work and the shops. Knots of uniformed schoolchildren jump out of the way of occasional vehicles. Nearly everyone greets me, "Hello, mma."

The only people who seem agitated in the heat are the conservationists, who noticed in late 1990 that heavy equipment had arrived and was being readied to dredge some 25 mites of the Boro River, one of the delta's major channels. The government plan was to increase the water supply to Maun and to the diamond mines 160 miles away in Orapa. This was met with opposition from locals, who watched a section of the Boro silt up and degrade after a similar dredging operation 20 years ago.

The issue has split Botswana's conservation community and spawned a new conservation group. Relationships are strained. The painful process of growth is under way.

But painful growth is going to be the name of the game as Botswana weighs the benefits of its pristine wild areas against the needs of an exploding population. Botswana has done what it can to steer away from mass tourism, has an environmental movement that's growing up fast, and enjoys a receptive, peaceful government.

With enormous, wide-open spaces, Botswana may have a better chance than other African nations of safeguarding its precious wilderness for the next generation.

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