THE FOREST. I 77 



turns upon them, perhaps without iiuii h jirovocation, they will express themselves 

 as deeply injured that any creature could be so bloodthirsty and ferocious as to 

 try to do them bodily harm. Ferocious, savage, vindictive brute are terms 

 freely used of such animals, but these terms could be applied just as becomingly 

 to describe the hunter. It is only once in a way that an animal will try to harm 

 a human being, and then it has very heavy odds to contend with. The hunter 

 kills harmless and dang:erous animals indiscriminatelv ; he does not wait for them 

 to attack him first, and he has, as a rule, suffered nothing at their hands when 

 he commences his hunting. He has neither right nor justice, then, in resenting that 

 any animal should try to retaliate on him. 



But to return to elephant-hunting. From my own experiences, I am inclined to 

 think it is a more dangerous pursuit than any other kind of hunting. For, in the 

 brief experience of elephants falling to my rifle, I have on three occasions very 

 narrowly missed being had by them, not to mention the many times 1 have been 

 forced to run out of their paths. On one of these occasions I was kicked aside by a 

 young elephant, and crawled away on all-fours, whilst he was busily engaged in 

 pounding the ground on which I had been standing, evidently believing that I 

 was beneath him. 



The consensus of opinion and the casualty list gives the verdict to the lion as 

 being the most dangerous. The latter is more certain to damage you if he means 

 business, but I should think the proportions of narrow shaves with elephants would 

 be much more numerous. An elephant is not destined by nature for the capture and 

 killing of a little pigmy creature like man. When he gets angry he rushes for the 

 object of his rage with the intention of doing him some sort of damage. If he 

 tramples on him or runs a tusk through him, or catches him up with his trunk and 

 throws him against a tree, the chances are that there will not be much left of the 

 hunter. Owing, however, to his own ponderous body and the smallness of his 

 adversary in proportion, and also because of his defective eyesight, he as often as not 

 makes a bad shot for his victim, either with trunk or tusk ; or, again, he may lose 

 the wind and pass by apparently without seeing him. 



I do not suppose that when he gets angry he has any very clear idea of what he 

 intends to do. After relieving his rage by one or two vigorous prods which may do 

 no more harm than disturb some earth, the lurking fear of mankind at the back of 

 his mind reasserts itself, and whether or no he has finished his victim, he clears off. 

 Many a sportsman has lived to tell the tale of some great elephant having stood over 

 him as he lay on the ground, and of its making bad shots for him with its tusks. 

 Some have been caught up and thrown into soft bushes, others have had elephants 



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