1868.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 281 



move with their camels, cattle, sheep, goats and mules to the high- 

 lands and remain there from June till November. They are thus 

 during different parts of the year subject to different nationalities ; 

 they pay tribute to the Turks for their occupancy of the lowlands, 

 and to the Abyssinians for the pasturage in the highlands. They are 

 all Mahommedans. 



We had seen a few tracks of wild elephants on our road up the 

 valley. They migrate like the people, descending to the lowlands when 

 the latter are green with the winter's rain, and ascending to the high- 

 lands in June and July. We heard that some were in the neighbour- 

 hood of Kokai, and the morning after our arrival, the villagers brought 

 us information of a small herd near our encampment. They were in 

 fact only about a mile distant, and, singularly enough, in the middle 

 of the camels which were feeding in all directions in the jungle. They 

 were in a most extraordinary place for wild elephants. Not only 

 were there the camels, but the men with the camels had been in the 

 immediate neighbourhood the whole morning, shouting and making 

 a noise that no Indian wild elephant in the daytime would have 

 remained within miles of. When the elephants were first pointed 

 out to us, a camel was quietly browzing within 20 yards of one of them, 

 neither elephant nor camel taking any notice of each other. 



There were 5 elephants ; one old female and 4 males of various 

 sizes, the largest nearly the size of the female, the others smaller, the 

 youngest not above 3 feet high. We succeeded in killing all, the 

 little one being shot by some mistake. They shewed no disposition 

 to fight, and we were rather ashamed of killing such quietly disposed 

 animals. The next herd met by one of our party were of a very 

 different temper, and he had to run for his life from them, and Mr. 

 Jesse, one day when collecting little birds with only dust shot in his 

 gun, was charged without provocation by an immense female. 



It was evident that the whole herd was a family, the mother and 

 her 4 young ones of various ages, and it is probable that in this re- 

 spect the African elephants resemble those of Ceylon as described in 

 Sir E. Tennant's work. I secured the skull of the largest elephant. 

 All had very small tusks, as indeed, have all the elephants of this 

 portion of Abyssinia; so that nearly tuskless races occur amongst 

 the African as well as the Asiatic elephants. We tried elephant's 



