SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 77 



cutting away earth from the end or side of the pitfall, quicker 

 than a navvy could with a spade, and at last successfully freeing 

 their companion, who stamps all the debris of the broken- 

 down sides beneath his feet, by helping him with their trunks 

 up the rough kind of incline they have made. This oc- 

 curred one night within 300 yards of our waggons ; we, ot 

 course, did not see the operations, but we heard them being 

 carried on, and the elephants talking to one another, and these 

 were the inferences the Kafirs drew next morning from the 

 foot-marks and appearances, and they assured me the case was 

 not uncommon. If the wariness of these heavy animals among 

 pitfalls is wonderful, not less to be admired is the way in which 

 they manage to clamber up trackless heights, and come down 

 by impossible-looking paths. A wall of rock 300 feet high is 

 before me ; immediately along the edge runs a shelf five or 

 six feet wide, in places so precipitous that you could only slip 

 down it, and even that at considerable risk, but over it, in 

 Indian file, come eighteen or twenty elephants making their 

 way to the jungle below. As they reach the sharp inclines they 

 sit down, and thrusting their hind legs straight out under them, 

 as far forward as they can, they 'go it,' as Albert Smith used 

 to say of the Alpine tourist, and everyone comes safely to 

 the bottom. They take readily to deep water, displacing so 

 much that only the ridge of the back, and upper part of the 

 head down to the eyes, show above the surface ; they carry the 

 trunk up and swim strongly. I have known them come to the 

 opposite side of a river, and finding the bank too steep to climb, 

 at once begin pounding it with their forefeet until they had 

 established a firm resting-place for one gigantic rammer, and 

 then starting from their fresh point of departure, go on making 

 steps till the flight was complete this was in India. 



In elephant country we were always obliged to be very 

 careful, for a single shot at night will sometimes drive a herd far 

 away. Unlike the rhinoceros and buffalo, elephants seldom 

 drink twice at the same place in a river. This is partly due to 

 caution, though perhaps it may chiefly depend on their soon 



