Sir Samuel Mbtte 3Bafeer 561 



piercing the second through heart and lungs. But 

 perhaps his finest achievement with this tremendous 

 weapon was a grand shot at an elephant 120 yards 

 distant ; the huge bullet struck the beast fair and full 

 in the forehead, and Behemoth fell stone dead in his 

 tracks. 



As no one, before or since his time, has had such 

 experience of elephant-hunting, it is interesting to know 

 Baker's opinion of the noble quarry. I have quoted 

 William Cotton Oswell's description of the elephant as 

 the real " King of beasts " in Africa, and Baker assigns 

 Behemoth the same royal pre-eminence in Asia. 



" The King of beasts," he says, " is generally acknow- 

 ledged to be the lion ; but no one who has seen a wild 

 elephant can doubt for a moment that the title belongs 

 to him in his own right. Lord of all created animals 

 in might and sagacity, the elephant roams through 

 his native forests. He browses upon the lofty branches, 

 upturns young trees from sheer malice, and from plain 

 to forest he stalks majestically at break of day, 

 'monarch of all he surveys.' . . . 



A person who has never seen a wild elephant 

 can form no idea of his real character, either mentally 

 or physically. The unwieldy and sleepy-looking beast 

 who, penned up in his cage at a menagerie, receives 

 a sixpence in his trunk, and turns round with difficulty 

 to deposit it in a box, whose mental powers seem 

 to be concentrated in the idea of receiving buns tossed 

 into a gaping mouth by children's hands this very 

 beast may have come from a war- like stock. His sire 

 may have been the terror of a district, a pitiless 



VOL. II. 15 



