HIS DEATH. l6l 



of a hill down which the elephant had zigzagged at a walk. 

 On rounding some thick bushes the man in front of me 

 pointed, and there was the huge monster standing in some 

 water. Pushing Brooke to the front he steadily raised his 

 rifle, and aiming at the orifice of the ear let drive, and down 

 came the grand old tusker with a crash, sending up the water 

 far above our heads. It was a long shot — twenty-seven 

 yards. I ran down to the elephant, and seeing he was not 

 dead Brooke killed him by a shot in the back of his head, and 

 thus died the largest and toughest old tusker I ever came 

 across ; a grand trophy. His tusk measured five feet eleven 

 inches outside the lip, and carefully measuring him we made 

 him exactly eleven feet high with an enormously thick neck ; 

 although he showed no signs of great age except in his feet, 

 he must have been, I think, a very old animal. We had 

 seven miles to get home, but right cheerfully we accom- 

 plished the journey, Brooke doing the greater part of it with 

 only one shoe. We did not arrive at the bungalow till long 

 after dark. 



We devoted the greater part of the next day to cutting 

 out the tusks, and a long business it was. The broken tusk 

 was in a very decayed state, and the foetid odour from it 

 almost unbearable. How the poor brute must have suffered ! 



In respect to the tusks of this elephant the following 

 letter in the Field newspaper, from the late Sir Victor 

 Brooke, settles the question as to their size and weight : — 



" Sir — Will you kindly allow me to correct a mistake 

 in your correspondent ' Smoothbore's ' letter, published under 

 the above heading in your issue of the ist inst. In his 

 letter ' Smoothbore ' states that the weight of the large tusk 

 of the elephant shot by me in the Hassanoor Hills, Southern 



II 



