452 MAN AT WAR WITH THE ELEPHANT. 



third year he is nearly six feet high. He continues to grow, but less 

 rapidly, until twenty-two or twenty-four years old. The female 

 adults measure generally from seven to nine feet in height, and the 

 males from ten feet and a half to twelve. As may be inferred from 

 the tardiness of his growth, the elephant enjoys the privilege of longe- 

 vity. He has been known to live in captivity to the age of 120 or 

 130 years; but Cuvier was of opinion that in his free and wild con- 

 dition he might well number nearly a couple of centuries. 



The Africans hunt the elephant for the sake of his ivory and 

 flesh ; in India, and the isles of the Indian Ocean, to reduce them to 

 subjection. In Africa, for many negro populations, ivory and " ebony 

 wood " (an euphuism by which the slave-dealers designate their 

 black slaves) are the sole articles of commerce, and the majority of 

 the English, Dutch, and French colonists carry on a considerable 

 traffic in elephants' teeth. The negroes excavate wide pits, which they 

 cover over with branches ; and the elephants falling into them 

 are precipitated headlong upon sharpened stakes ; or they kill them 

 either with arrows, assegays, or musketry. Hunting them with spears 

 is truly a ferocious pastime. The poor elephant only succumbs after 

 receiving so great a number of projectiles that his body resembles an 

 enormous porcupine. He rarely turns upon his aggressors ; he seeks 

 to fly ; he fills the air with plaintive wailings ; the female throws 

 her huge bulk between her young ones and the enemy ; the male 

 sometimes rushes furiously upon his assailants, and woe to the latter 

 if he overtake them ; he crushes them under his hoofs, he pierces 

 them with his tusks, or seizes them with his trunk, and dashes them 

 upon the earth a shapeless and bleeding mass. But nimble and 

 experienced hunters easily elude his charge, whose onset he is pre- 

 vented from moderating by his weight, or from rapidly changing its 

 direction. 



But firearms, and especially the recently perfected rifles, are 

 assuredly the best weapons to employ against the leviathan. With 

 a Westley-Kichards, for instance, a good marksman, aiming at the 

 shoulder-joint or the ear, is certain to bring down his game ; he may 



