214 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



Centenius, upon the Anio, and in Lucania, in that 

 wonderful sixteen years' Itahan campaign. 



In that long and most memorable war, the 

 African elephant never saw defeat. Polybius tells 

 us that no Roman General ever dared to close with 

 Hannibal. May we not infer that the elephant 

 contributed in great measure to this wholesome 

 dread of the Carthaginian's prowess ? Alas ! how 

 have the mighty fallen ! Instead of assisting great 

 captains and mighty armies, and contributing to 

 splendid victories as of yore, the African elephant 

 has been hunted and destroyed these two hundred 

 years past with such unrelenting ardour, that his 

 disappearance, not only from South Africa, but from 

 the whole of the Dark Continent, is now only a 

 question of a generation or two. 



But a few short years back, I myself witnessed 

 many a waggon-load of ivory passing down from the 

 interior to the coast ; nowadays the supply is 

 meagre indeed, and the stream that erstwhile was 

 poured forth in abundance, now trickles feebly and 

 intermittently. It was a wonderful sight (albeit a 

 melancholy, if one only reflected on the waste of life) 

 to witness the great waggons, crammed with ivory, 

 toil-worn and travel-stained by the storm and stress 

 of thousands of miles of rough and uneasy trekking, 

 standing outspanned for the evening, or dischafging 

 their rich contents in the market-place. What 

 strange and moving histories those waggons could 

 have yielded if but they could have found tongue 

 — the silent witnesses of many a toilsome trek 

 through arid thirst-land, dense jungle and park-like 

 champaign, studded thickly with the giraffe-acacia, 

 the baobab, and many another tree and shrub. 



