The Elephant 65 



Impressive examples of solicitude have, however, been 

 observed. Moodie tells that he saw a female — whom 

 the experience of most hunters shows to be much more 

 likely to act in this manner than a male — guard her 

 wounded mate, and how she, " regardless of her own 

 danger, quitted her shelter in the woods, rushed out to his 

 assistance, walked round and round him, chased away the 

 assailants, and returning to his side caressed him. When- 

 ever he attempted to walk, she placed her flank or her 

 shoulder to his wounded side and supported him." Fred- 

 erick Green wrote an altogether unique account to 

 Andersson of the succor of an elephant nat had been 

 shot, by one who was a stranger, of the lame sex, and 

 who encountered him far from the scene vhere his mis- 

 fortune had befallen him. 



The Bushmen, he says, often asserted that elephants 

 would carry water in their trunks to a wounded companion 

 at a long distance in the "Weldt." Green, however, did 

 not believe it, until, while hunting in the Lake Regions, 

 he was compelled, from want of ammunition, "to leave an 

 elephant that was crippled (one of his fore legs had been 

 broken, besides having eleven wounds in his body) some 

 thirty miles from the waggons." 



"As I felt confident," this writer continues, "that he 

 would die of his wounds ... I despatched Bushmen after 

 him instead of going myself ; but they, not attending to 

 my commands, remained for two days beside an elephant 

 previously killed by my after-rider. It was, therefore, not 

 until the fourth evening after I left this elephant that the 

 Bushmen came up with him. . . . They found him still 



