282 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
As the bodies of the first day’s victims were becom- 
ing very offensive, we changed our quarters, moving 
off to a place about five miles’ distance from the pits. 
I started from Madura that night, rejoiced to quit a 
scene which had fatigued me exceedingly, and pro- 
duced a painful excess of excitement which I was glad 
to have the opportunity of abating by repose. 
The only accidents that had occurred during this 
formidable hunt were two, at least of a serious nature. 
One poor fellow had his leg fractured by an elephant, 
which charged him in the plain before the herd was 
secured within the snare ; and a palenkeen-bearer’s 
arm was broken by a musket-ball. It is really asto- 
nishing that so few accidents happened, when the 
number of people employed is considered— not less in 
the whole than four thousand, and that for twelve 
days — together with the nature of the sport, and the 
extreme hazard to which every individual employed 
is necessarily exposed. You will probably recollect 
my reading to you part of a newspaper account of the 
destruction of an elephant at Exeter Change, when 
some fifty persons, and amongst them a file of soldiers, 
took a whole day to despatch it. Now we, in an en- 
closure not more than two hundred yards in diameter, 
destroyed fifty elephants in about five hours, and cer- 
tainly forty-five of them were killed by five persons. 
I send you the tail of a large elephant, that fell in- 
stantly dead to a two-ounce shot of mine at a dis- 
tance of seventy yards. It had been previously knock- 
ed down twice, but rose again. We counted seventeen 
balls in the front and on one side of its skull after it 
was dead ; allowing four only for the side on which it 
