258 
THE ELEPHANT. 
of his party by an infuriated elephant, says : “ The 
quickest pace of the animal is a trot, and I observed 
that the legs of the large male, which caught the 
man, moved as fast as those of a horse when trot¬ 
ting. I had afterwards the curiosity to measure 
the distance between the prints of the elephant’s 
feet, and found that it was about nine feet where 
he ran with the greatest speed in pursuit of his vic¬ 
tim. This elephant did not exceed ten feet in 
height.” After ascertaining the number of steps a 
horse usually takes in any given time whilst trot¬ 
ting, and the length of each step, Moodie goes on 
to say, £C We may easily calculate the comparative 
speed of an elephant with tolerable accuracy.” 
The strength of the African elephant is enormous. 
On a certain occasion, I myself saw a huge male, 
in his gambols, crush to the ground, at one and 
the same time, three lofty trees, the stems of which 
were from eight to ten inches in diameter. The feat 
appeared to be accomplished partly by the weight 
of his ponderous body, and partly by main force; 
for, twisting his proboscis round the trees, he leaned 
obliquely forward, and the next instant the splin¬ 
tered trunks were prostrated, and deeply buried in 
the sandy soil. On another occasion, I had lodged 
a ball in the most deadly part of an elephant’s 
shoulder, when the poor brute, in his death agonies, 
encircled four tall acacias of equal size to the trees 
just spoken of, and presently afterwards sank to 
the ground amid a mass of broken boughs and 
timber. 
When speaking of the ££ spoor,” or track, of 
