ELEPHANTS. 173 



Borthwick, of the 79th Highlanders, had arrived on leave of 

 absence from Kamptee, and on my departure took Atlay 

 over as head tracker. I warned them that he was reliable 

 on all occasions except when tuskers were concerned, and 

 sometime afterwards received an account of their sport, and 

 of Atlay's behaviour, with which they were much dis- 

 gusted, as whenever elephants were encountered he 

 executed a strategic movement to the rear, a most pro- 

 voking occurrence when one's spare rifle also vanishes with 

 the truant. They had good sport with elephants, but the 

 grass was too long for successful bison stalking. More- 

 over, these animals had been much worried, and were 

 extremely wary, as Major Barnett and I had been having 

 excellent sport there for some time previous. A friend 

 told me of a narrow shave he once had with a tusker in the 

 Javalee Hills. Two very old tuskers had been there for 

 years, and various sportsmen had tried to annex them 

 from time to time, but all declared that their skulls had 

 become impervious to bullets, owing to ossification of the 

 cellular parts of the skull close to the brain, which sets in 

 as these animals increase in age. The natives told him 

 that, although repeatedly fired at, the elephants invariably 

 returned to their favourite haunts after some lapse of time. 

 He accordingly went down and fired at and wounded one 

 of the tuskers, but the pair went away as usual, seemingly 

 not much the worse for wear. Some months afterwards he 

 repeated his visit, and again wounded one of the tuskers, 

 which pursued him until he was almost dead beat, when he 

 fell, or threw himself into a hollow in the ground, tlie 

 elephant passing on, luckily without seeing him. He thus 

 owed his life to the defective vision of the animal. 



This was pretty close work, but another friend of mine 

 had a far more thrilling experience. He was quartered at 



