CUTTING-UP OF AN ELEPHANT. 



437 



and heart, attempts to escape ; its enemies then redouble their 

 efforts, and at length the huge prey, overpowered by pain and 

 loss of blood, trickling from a hundred wounds, bites the dust. 

 The victors, after certain preliminaries of singing and dancing, 

 carefully cut out the tusks, and devour the rich marrow upon the 

 spot. The chase concludes with a grand feast of fat and 

 garbage, and the hunters return home in triumph, laden with 

 ivory, with ovals of hide for shields, and with festoons of raw 

 meat spitted upon long poles. 



The cutting-up of an elephant by a negro tribe is quite a 

 unique spectacle. The men stand round the animal in dead 

 silence, while the chief of the party declares that, according to 

 ancient law, the head and right hind-leg belong to him wlio 

 inflicted the first wound ; the left leg to him who delivered the 

 second, or first touched the animal after it fell, and different 

 parts to the headmen of the different groups of which the camp 

 is composed, not forgetting to enjoin the preservation of the 

 fat and bowels for a second distribution. This oration finished, 

 the natives soon become excited, and scream wildly as they cut 

 away at the carcase with a score of spears, whose long handles 

 quiver in the air above their heads. Their excitement becomes 

 momentarily more and more intense, and reaches the culmin- 

 ating point when, as denoted by a roar of gas, the huge mass is 

 laid fairly open. Some jump inside and roll about there in 

 their eagerness to seize some precious morsel, while others run 

 off screaming with pieces of the bloody meat, throw it on the 

 grass, and run back for more ; all keep talking and shouting at 

 the utmost pitch of their voices. Sometimes two or three, 

 regardless of all laws, seize the same piece of meat, and have a 

 brief fight of words over it. Occasionally an agonized yell 

 bursts forth, and a native emerges out of the huge carcase with* 

 his hand badly cut by the spear of his excited friend and 

 neighbour. 



A much more formidable enemy of this noble animal than 

 the spears or pitfalls of the African barbarians is the rifle, 

 particularly in the hands of a European marksman ; for while 

 the natives generally stand at the distance of a hundred yards 

 or more, and of course spend all the force of their bullets on 

 the air, the English hunters, relying on their steadiness of aim, 

 approach to within thirty yards of the animal, where they are 



