258 THE ELEPHANT. 



of his party by an infuriated elephant, says : " The 

 quickest pace of the animal is a trot, and I observed 

 that the legs of the large male, which caught the 

 man, moved as fast as those of a horse when trot- 

 ting. I had afterwards the curiosity to measure 

 the distance between the prints of the elephant's 

 feet, and found that it was about nine feet where 

 he ran with the greatest speed in pursuit of his vic- 

 tim. This elephant did not exceed ten feet in 

 height." After ascertaining the number of steps a 

 horse usually takes in any given time whilst trot- 

 ting, and the length of each step, Moodie goes on 

 to say, " We may easily calculate the comparative 

 speed of an elephant with tolerable accuracy." 



The strength of the African elephant is enormous. 

 On a certain occasion, I myself saw a huge male, 

 in his gambols, crush to the ground, at one and 

 the same time, three lofty trees, the stems of which 

 were from eight to ten inches in diameter. The feat 

 appeared to be accomplished partly by the weight 

 of his ponderous body, and partly by main force ; 

 for, twisting his proboscis round the trees, he leaned 

 obliquely forward, and the next instant the splin- 

 tered trunks were prostrated, and deeply buried in 

 the sandy soil. On another occasion, I had lodged 

 a ball in the most deadly part of an elephant's 

 shoulder, when the poor brute, in his death agonies, 

 encircled four tall acacias of equal size to the trees 

 just spoken of, and presently afterwards sank to 

 the ground amid a mass of broken boughs and 

 timber. 



AVhen speaking of the " spoor," or track, of 



