CHAPTER XII. 

 THE FALL OF THE ELEPHANT. 



WHILE travelling up country from Port 

 Elizabeth, I often heard of the elephants 

 that, thanks to a timely preservation, yet 

 remain to Cape Colony. These animals wander in 

 small troops through a large expanse of the dense 

 bush-veldt that clothes much of the eastern portions 

 of the Colony, and in the Knysna Forest to the 

 extreme south ; and many amusing stories are told 

 of their unwieldy pranks upon the outskirts of 

 civilisation. As we passed through Uitenhage, we 

 heard that some of these obtrusive mammoths had 

 been, a few days previously, destroying the telegraph 

 posts, and over-running the railway line close to the 

 town. Only last year (1888) a troop of sixty 

 elephants besides calves was seen in the Addo 

 Bush. Many of the farmers of the Winterhoek and 

 other adjacent localities are visited by these playful 

 giants, and occasionally awake in the morning to find 

 their mealie fields and gardens severely punished. 

 Two years since, in 1887, Mrs. Hess, of Vaaldam, 

 Winterhoek, was awakened one night by the angry 

 barking of her dog. Sallying forth she searched her 

 premises, and finding everything quiet returned to 

 bed ; at two o'clock in the morning, however, a 

 Hottentot servant aroused her with the curious 

 intelligence that a wool-waggon was in the goat 

 kraal. Naturally anxious to verify such perplexing 



