54 ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



country in large herds. The foot-paths formed through 

 successive ages by the feet of these mighty animals are 

 still discernible on the sides and in the necks of some 

 of the forest-clad hills, and the skulls and larger bonen 

 of many are at this moment bleaching in some of the 

 forest- kloofs or ravines adjacent to the sea in Lower 

 Albany. 



From time immemorial, these interesting and stupen- 

 dous quadrupeds had maintained their ground through- 

 out these their paternal domains, although they were 

 constantly hunted, and numbers of them were slain, by 

 the neighboring active and athletic warriors of the Am- 

 aponda tribes, on account of their flesh, the ivory so 

 much prized among civilized nations being by them es- 

 teemed of no value, the only purpose to which they 

 adapt it being the manufacture of rings and ornaments 

 for their fingers and arms. These gallant fellows, arm- 

 ed only with their assagais or light javelins of their own 

 manufacture, were in the constant habit of attacking 

 the gigantic animals, and overpowering them with the 

 accumulated showers of their weapons. At length, 

 however, when the white lords of the creation pitched 

 their camps on the shores of Southern Africa, a more 

 determined and general warfare was waged against the 

 elephants on account of their ivory, with the more de- 

 structive engines of ball and powder. In a few years, 

 those who managed to escape from the hands of their 

 oppressors, after wandering from forest to forest, and 

 from one mountain range to another, and finding that 

 sanctuary there was none, turned their faces to the 

 northeast, and "trekked" or migrated from their an- 

 cestral jungles to lands unknown. A small remnant, 

 however, remained ; and these, along with a few buffa- 

 loeSj koodoos, and one solitary black rhinoceros, still 



