150 HUNTING THE ELEPHANT. 



Before he could reload another bull elephant charged him, at close range. 

 To be charged by an African elephant is as exciting a sensation as a man 

 could wish for. The fierceness of his on-rush passes description. He makes 

 for you suddenly, unexpectedly. The overpowering proportions of the enraged 

 beast — the grotesque aspect of his immense flopping ears, which made his 

 huge head look more formidable than ever — the incredible pace at which he 

 thundered along — all combined with his shrill trumpeting to produce an effect 

 upon the mind of the hunters which they will never shake themselves rid of 

 as long as life lasts. 



"When," says a famous African hunter, "it is a case not of one single 

 elephant, but of an entire herd giving chase in the open plain, the readers will 

 have no difficulty in understanding that even now I sometimes live the whole 

 situation over again in my dreams and that I have more than once awoke 

 from them in a frenzy of terror." 



Fortunately in this case the rest of the herd took to flight through the 

 thicket. Both Mr. Selous and Mr. Roosevelt got behind trees, and the former 

 fired at the charging bull and turned him from the Colonel just in time to 

 save his life. 



One of the naturalists connected with the Roosevelt expedition, Mr. Ed- 

 mund Heller, succeeded in preserving entire and in good condition the skin 

 of the magnificent bull. It was a splendid specimen, its tusks weighing eighty 

 pounds each. One of our illustrations shows how the big animal is skinned. 

 On another page the reader will find a caravan carrying ivory to the coast. 

 The ivory trade is a very profitable business and thousands of natives and 

 Europeans are employed in its service. Ivory is chiefly required to make 

 billiard balls and ornaments. It is. however, getting more and more rare, 

 for during the last hundred years several millions of elephants have been 

 ruthlessly slaughtered, so that this animal is no longer to be found anywhere 

 in its original numbers. It is found most frequently in the desert places 

 between Abyssinia and the Nile and the Galla country, or in the inaccessible 

 parts of the Congo, on the Albert Nyanza, and in the forests of Nigeria and 

 the Gold Coast. But in the vicinity of Victoria Nyanza, where Roosevelt 

 hunted, and where a single elephant hunter some years ago alone slaughtered 

 hundreds, things have changed greatly, and still it is not the white man who 

 does most of this work of destruction. It is the native who obtains the 

 greater part of the ivory used in commerce. Two subjects of a savage chief 

 killed, for instance, a short time back, in the space of a year and a half. 



