226 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER CH. 



the first shot from my 1075 mm. had passed 

 through the upper portion of his forehead, and I can 

 only ascribe my poor shooting on this occasion to 

 my weak condition and the unsteady state of my 

 nerves, due to the repeated heavy doses of quinine 

 that I had taken as a febrifuge. I can, moreover, 

 assure the reader that it is no easy matter, after a 

 solid month's fever, to manipulate in bush country a 

 rifle weighing thirteen pounds. 



The elephant which I had bagged proved to be a 

 comparatively small animal, measuring just about 

 eleven feet at the shoulder. His feet, as the natives 

 had remarked, were peculiarly small for such an old 

 beast, but, what was more important, his tusks were 

 beautifully long and straight and weighed 113 and 

 107 Ibs., respectively. On his carcase we counted 

 the scars of twenty-seven old bullet wounds, and 

 three fresh bullet wounds received from the native 

 hunters whose companion he had killed on the 

 previous day. One of the last-mentioned bullets had 

 become imbedded in the vertebrae of his tail, and 

 must have caused him considerable pain and 

 rendered him unusually vicious. 



This veteran of a hundred fights had, so the 

 native hunters informed me, killed three other 

 hunters in this district within the previous few years; 

 one of them, Fundi Bakali, by driving a tusk through 

 his chest and afterwards kneeling on his body ; a 



