chap. iv. ELEPHANT. 213 



we discovered that the elephants had gone, but the men 

 followed them up till nightfall, and though they said that 

 one of them was not with the others, but lagging behind 

 at a considerable distance, as only a severely wounded 

 one would have done, they were unable to overtake it, 

 and returned the following day. 



The natural history and habits of the elephant are too 

 well known to require any mention here. The species 

 found in Africa differs, as is well known, very consider- 

 ably from its Asiatic brother, but as far as concerns 

 the hunter the different formation of the head is the 

 only important point. In India and Ceylon the forehead 

 presents a certain mark, while in Africa it is quite imper- 

 vious. I have fired without making the slightest impres- 

 sion point-blank from ten yards' distance with a gun of 

 six bore at the exact spot that, in the Asiatic species, 

 would be instantly fatal, and the experiment has been as 

 fruitlessly tried dozens of times within my knowledge. 



Elephants would appear to exist all over Africa, and 

 not thirty years ago were as plentiful in our southern 

 colonies — where they are almost now extinct — as they still 

 are in some parts of the interior. The greed for ivory has 

 done its work, and at the present day they are only to 

 be found in one jungle in the Eastern Province of the 

 Cape Colony, where they are preserved ; in Kanraria and 

 Natal, where they were common twenty years ago, they 

 are extinct, and even in Zululand there is but one spot 

 where they still exist. They frequent, as I have men- 

 tioned, the country from the Pongolo northward, during 

 the summer season, retiring to their fastnesses in the 

 interior at the approach of winter. The general time of 



