THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
strongholds, where the density of the bush is all against the hunter and 
in favour of the hunted. “ Daat’s oorlog, mijn Baas ” (“ That’s war, my 
master ”), said a wizened old Griqua hunter who had been an after-rider 
to Gordon Cumming, as he described to me the joys and the dangers of 
elephant hunting. Fred Green, too, one of the most famous of the early 
South African elephant hunters, long ago pronounced the pursuit of 
these awe-inspiring beasts (when they charge screaming loudly, and 
with their great ears outspread) to be the grandest sport in the world; 
and the late Mr Arthur Neumann, facile princeps amongst modern 
elephant hunters, only shortly before his death expressed to me exactly 
the same opinion. 
However, with the reversion to the government of the Sudan of the 
Lado Enclave, which had been leased to King Leopold of Belgium for some 
years, the free elephant hunting — or elephant poaching, as it has been 
called — on which a few adventurous Englishmen had embarked during 
the interregnum, has come to an end, and with it the profession of 
elephant hunting as a means of livelihood. 
Now, elephants can only be shot legally in very limited numbers in any 
part of Africa which has been taken possession of by the representatives 
of the European Powers. In British East Africa, Uganda and the Sudan 
not more than two can be shot in any one year by any one man, and these 
must be bulls carrying tusks weighing 30 lb. apiece. In the two latter 
provinces, I think, two elephants are allowed under the £50 licence, but 
in British East Africa no elephants can be shot at all under the £40 licence; 
£10 extra must be paid for one elephant, and a second may be killed for 
a payment of another £20. In North-Eastern Rhodesia, I believe, four 
elephants may be shot under a £50 game licence, without restrictions as 
to sex or weight of tusks.* This permission to shoot a certain number of 
cow elephants has probably been rendered necessary by the devastation 
caused by these animals in the native cornfields and banana plantations, 
and it seems certain that in Uganda and other parts of Central Africa 
the large herds of cow elephants which now often cause great injury to 
the natives will also have to be reduced in numbers to a certain limited 
extent. 
All the old South African hunters who used to make their living by 
elephant hunting shot as many cows as they could which carried good 
tusks, for cow ivory, when of good quality and above a certain diameter, 
* These game regulations are, however, subject to constant alteration. 
8 
