AFKICAN ELEPHANT. 57 



Other herds are seen scattered over the valley as the 

 prospect opens ; some browsing on the juicy trees, others 

 reposing, and others regaling on the fresh roots of huge 

 mimosas which have been torn up ; while one immense 

 monster is amusing himself, as if it were but play to him, 

 with tearing up these great trees for his expectant family. 

 He digs with his stout tusks beneath the roots, now on 

 this side, now on that, now using one tusk, now the other, 

 prizing, and forcing away, and loosening the earth all 

 around, till at length with a tremendous pull of his twisted 

 proboscis, he tears up the reluctant tree, and inverting the 

 trunk amidst a shower of earth and stones, exposes the 

 juicy and tender rootlets to his hungry progeny. Well 

 may the traveller say that a herd of elephants browsing 

 in majestic tranquillity amidst the wild magnificence of 

 an African landscape is a very noble sight, and one, of 

 which he will never forget the impression.* 



Who has ever gazed upon the lion under conditions so 

 fitted to augment his terrible majesty, as those in which 

 the mighty hunter of South Africa was accustomed to 

 encounter him ? Who of us would have volunteered to 

 be his companion, when night after night he watched in 

 the pit that he had dug beside the Massouey fountain in 

 the remote Bamangwato country? There is the lonely 

 pool, situated in the open valley, silent and deserted by 

 day, but marked with well-beaten tracks converging to its 

 margins from every direction ; tracks in which the foot- 

 prints of elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, zebras, and 

 * African Sketches. 



