196 THE LAND OF THE LION 
not too near at all for a shot in cover, if the elephant is three- 
quarters facing you, you can easily send your 450 through 
the shoulder into the heart, and he will not travel one 
hundred yards, and, what is important, you have no more 
need to fear his charge. 
Most shots in the side fail for two reasons — they are 
too far back, and they are too high. Few hunters seem 
to take the trouble to stand by the bloody, high-smelling 
mass, and wait till they see for themselves how far forward 
the heart lies, and how low down. When a boy I had, 
of course, read Sir Samuel Baker’s sometimes extraordinary 
stories of the impossibility of quickly killing elephant. I 
remember well handling with reverence in Riley’s gun 
store, in Oxford Street, his famous elephant gun, which 
he nicknamed the “Baby.” It took a half-pound shell, 
if I remember rightly, and I do not dare to say what was 
its powder charge. It certainly did damage at the butt end, 
whatever it did at the muzzle. Selous was, I think, the 
first man to try a small bore .450 on elephant.* He did so 
because one of his other rifles was not to hand when he 
wanted it. Thereafter he used that calibre constantly. 
Then came the day of real small bores, the .303 English 
gun. Men found that rhino and elephant came down to 
well-planted shots from even that inferior weapon. 
To-day no one who has had experience burdens him- 
self any longer with the old-fashioned heavy rifles that 
were for so long deemed indispensable. I think that 
shortly the use of even a .500 or .577 cordite rifle will be 
uncommon. They are not needed. Any good rifle with 
a powerful powder charge will kill an elephant stone dead 
if the bullet, however small, is planted in the brain. It 
* This was of course a black powder gun, very different from the cordite .450 of to-day. But in 
Selous’s time, and in the country he hunted, you could ride elephants on a trained pony, galloping 
up to them, and galloping away. There was no need for the stealthy approach. You easily escaped 
the charge. In East Africa elephant hunting is no such simple matter. The odds are much more. Even 
to-day many are maimed or killed and elephants that have been much hunted are very dangerous. 
