The Elephant x r 



Africa by heavily-shafted assegais, which were plunged into them out of 

 trees, and left to work gradually deeper and deeper into their vitals, or 

 they were sometimes hamstrung whilst standing asleep with very broad 

 and thin-bladed axes made for the purpose. If the " Tendo Achillis " was 

 severed the elephant was anchored, and could be dispatched at leisure with 

 assegais, but when the tendon was not cut through the animal went off and 

 probably recovered. In 1872, whilst hunting in Northern Matabeleland, I 

 came across an elephant with a wound inflicted in this manner that was 

 still sloughing. With either a fore-leg or hind-leg broken an elephant can 

 scarcely move at all. With a broken shoulder he will stand quite still, 

 with the foot of the broken limb just doubled up and resting on its toe. If 

 approached when in so pitiable a plight the poor brute will raise its ears 

 and trunk and scream with impotent rage, and, finally, probably pitch on to 

 its head in a vain effort to reach its enemy. Sometimes, though seldom, 

 elephants are caught in pitfalls by the natives, but I have never known 

 any but young animals to be secured in this way. Sometimes a calf may 

 be jostled in by accident, and I once found a calf that had been trampled 

 to death during the preceding night on the edge of a muddy pool, where 

 a herd of elephants had been drinking. As a rule a herd of elephants will 

 walk through a lot of pitfalls without loss, uncovering them systematically 

 one after another. Although elephant cows with small calves are very 

 liable to be vicious, yet, when a herd is pursued, if a calf is too young to 

 keep up with its mother, it is allowed to drop out and take its chance. 

 Upon three different occasions, however, I have seen full-grown elephants 

 show great solicitude and put themselves into positions of danger in their 

 manifest anxiety for the safety of a wounded comrade. 



Let us hope that it will be many a long day before this truly noble 

 and majestic-looking animal, the undoubted lord of the brute creation, 

 will cease to wander over the uninhabited wastes of Africa ; and for my 

 part I think it will be, for Africa is a very vast continent, in which there 



