222 After Big Game in Central Africa 



beauty, this majestic conception of nature, the largest 

 and the most powerful of the animals of the earth, 

 nothing more than a mass of gray flesh appears in the 

 blood-spattered grass. 1 



The solitary elephant out of the way, I set to 

 work on the following day to search for the female 

 which I lost two days before. We are not long in 

 discovering her. She fell one hour's distance from 

 the spot where our hunter was injured, and during 

 these forty - eight hours has undergone a trans- 

 formation hardly to her advantage. The enormous 

 quantity of gas generated after death has completely 

 distended her skin ; she looks quite round and blown 

 out, and resembles one of those gigantic elephants 

 made of gold-beater's skin which toy merchants sell. 

 The skin is so thick that the gas is so far powerless 

 to burst it, and no odour can be smelt outside. 

 Maggots, deposited by flies, swarm in her mouth and 

 at the commissure of the lips. Her face is swollen 

 like the rest of her shapeless body ; never was a 

 " pneumatic " more blown out. When the skin 

 bursts under the pressure of the gas it will not be 

 pleasant in the neighbourhood, and I fear that under 

 the burning sun this catastrophe will arrive soon. 



Msiambiri, who is never at a loss for a joke, 

 immediately tells us of an extraordinary occurrence 

 which happened amid similar circumstances. The 

 elephant in question had eaten a large quantity of 



1 This elephant was the largest I killed in those regions. Its 

 measurements will be found in the table at the end of this work. 

 As will be seen, its tusks weighed seventy pounds each. 



