BULLET AND SHOT 



(the rest of his body being under water) I fired 

 both barrels of my 8-bore down into it. A jet of 

 blood spouted forth at each shot, and I hastily re- 

 loaded, whereupon, as the elephant tried to get up 

 the bank, just in front of me, I brained him. He 

 sank back, some bubbles rose from the tip of his 

 trunk, and I had bagged my first elephant. I had 

 shot a bison and an elephant before 1 2 o'clock ! 



I was terribly afraid that the river might rise 

 during the night and the carcass be carried away, 

 so I sent for stout ropes, and had it securely 

 fastened to trees. Cutting out the tusks was, under 

 the circumstances, a work of great difficulty, and 

 it took a large number of men procured the next 

 morning, and working hard from then until late 

 afternoon, to extract them. I was obliged to 

 abandon all idea of preserving the feet. The 

 tusks of this elephant showed about 2\ feet outside 

 of the gum, and when extracted proved to be re- 

 spectively 4 feet 10 inches, and 4 feet n|- inches in 

 length, and 15 inches in greatest girth. They 

 weighed 63 Ibs. the pair. 



In 1883 I bagged three elephants. The shooting 

 of the first two was unaccompanied by any incident 

 worthy of relation, but that of the third was some- 

 what extraordinary. 



234 



