282 



THRILLING ADVENTURES. 



phants, or the rules to be adopted in hunting them, or deem 

 it probable that I should never see them more. 



Having knee-haltered our horses, we set to work with our 

 knives and assagais to prepare the skull for the hatchet, in 

 order to cut out the tusks, nearly half the length of which, I 

 may mention, is embedded in bone sockets in the fore part of 

 the skull. To cut out the tusks of a cow elephant requires 

 barely one-fifth of the labor requisite to cut out those of a 

 bull ; and when the sun went down we had managed by our 

 combined eiforts to cut out one of the tusks of my first ele- 

 phant, with which we triumphantly returned, having left the 

 guides in charge of the carcass, where they volunteered to 

 take up their quarters for the night. 



