50 THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 



moderated, and his intellectual powers developed by tuition, 

 we find him elevated to the highest degree of perfection his 

 nature can sustain ; and in return he renders all his endow- 

 ments subservient to the wants and luxuries of his master. 



But in the history of the elephant of Africa the scene is 

 sadly reversed. In the wild regions which he traverses we 

 find that in his relations to mankind, mutual fear and deadly 

 enmity usurp the place of services and benefactions. 



How often in the records of African travellers is the fol- 

 lowing picture presented ! A tribe of Africans of a mild and 

 unwarlike disposition cultivate a fertile spot on the banks of 

 some large stream, and subsist on the produce of their rice 

 grounds, fields of maize, and plantations of sugar-cane. The 

 time of harvest having arrived, they rejoice at the ample store 

 of nutriment provided for their subsistence during the un- 

 productive months. In a single night the hopes of a season 

 are blighted. With rushing noise and the earth trembling 

 beneath their tread, a herd of wild and hungry elephants 

 come suddenly upon the devoted settlement, attracted by the 

 ripened vegetables. The poor negroes, surprised in sleep, 

 and destitute of fire-arms, in vain attempt to oppose the pro- 

 gress of these formidable invaders. Their simple huts are 

 overturned; and such as are unable to escape are beaten 

 down with an irresistible blow of the proboscis, trodden 

 under foot, or gored to death. The morning displays to the 

 survivors the spot which had been occupied by their planta- 

 tions converted into a wilderness and swamp ; for the ele- 

 phants tread down and destroy more than they consume. A 

 famine succeeds, and pestilence its usual concomitant ; and 

 the w r retched remnant of the tribe are driven to the alterna- 

 tive of perishing through hunger, or of selling themselves as 

 slaves to a more fortunate tribe. 



But for occasional ravages of this description man takes 

 ample vengeance, by the unceasing warfare waged against the 

 offenders for the sake of their tusks. All the methods of 

 capture practised against the elephant of Africa have his 

 destruction for their end, his utility being confined to the 

 ivory he furnishes for commerce; for the tusks of this 

 species are very large, and of equal size both in the male and 

 female. We are informed by Lander that the negroes inha- 

 biting the banks of the Niger employ a very simple stratagem 

 to insure the destruction of their ponderous and dreaded 

 neighbour. In one of the beaten tracks by which the ele- 

 phants pass down from the forests to bathe in the stream, a 

 lance is fixed in the ground, pointing towards the part from 

 which they issue : this being concealed by brushwood, pene- 



