TKHilliam Cotton swell 349 



tails straight out behind them, but not another creature 

 is to be seen. The king drinks. Not a sound is heard. 

 He squirts the water over his back, makes the whole 

 pool muddy, and retires solemnly, leaving his subjects, 

 who now gather round, to make the best of what he has 

 fouled. This is the king in the opinion of the beasts. 

 You may think him a nervous monarch, subject to 

 panic, and I do not know that you are not right ; but 

 he has weight in the animal world, you may be assured." 



And to think that the man who could write like this 

 was within an ace of going to his grave without leaving 

 any written record whatever of his wonderful and 

 thrilling adventures ! It was fortunate indeed that 

 when he was between seventy and eighty, but two 

 years before his death, his old friend Sir Samuel Baker 

 persuaded him to put his experiences on paper, and 

 Mr. Norton Longman at the same time promised to find 

 a place for them in the Badminton volume on " Big 

 Game." To that volume, besides Oswald, such dis- 

 tinguished hunters as Sir Samuel Baker, Mr. Clive 

 Phillipps-Wolley, Mr. F. J. Jackson, Mr. Warburton 

 Pike, and Mr. F. C. Selous have contributed, with the 

 result that it is, to my thinking, the most fascinating 

 book of sport that I have ever come across. 



But to come back to the elephant. For the 

 marvellous instances of his sagacity and intelligence 

 given by Oswell, and the exciting sport which he 

 affords, I must refer the reader to the Badminton 

 volume. I can only find space for the following 

 remarkable escape from Behemoth's vengeance which 

 Livingstone chronicles in his " Missionary Travels " : 



