chap. i. ELEPHANT SLAUGHTER. 13 



left. One tracker now leads the way, and they 

 cautiously proceed. The boughs are heard slightly 

 rustling as the unconscious elephants are fanning the 

 flies from their bodies within a hundred yards of the 

 guns. 



The jungle is open and good, interspersed with 

 plots of rank grass ; and quietly following the head 

 tracker, into whose hands our friends have committed 

 themselves, they follow like hounds under the control 

 of a huntsman. The tracker is a famous fellow, and 

 he brings up his employers in a masterly manner 

 within ten paces of the still unconscious elephants. 

 He now retreats quietly behind the guns, and the 

 sport begins. A cloud of smoke from a regular 

 volley, a crash through the splintering branches as the 

 panic-stricken herd rush from the scene of conflict, 

 and it is all over. X. has killed two, Y. has killed 

 one, and Z. knocked down one, but he got up again 

 and got away ; total, three bagged. Our friends now 

 return to the tent, and, after perhaps a month of this 

 kind of shooting, they arrive at their original head- 

 quarters, having bagged perhaps twenty elephants. 

 They give their opinion upon elephant-shooting, and 

 declare it to be capital sport, but there is no danger in 

 it, as the elephants invariably run away. 



Let us imagine ourselves in the position of the 



half-asleep and unsuspecting herd. We are lying 



down in a doze during the heat of the day, and our 



c 2 



