CHAPTER X 
ELEPHANT HUNTING NOT AN OCCASION FOR LIGHT¬ 
SOME MERRYMAKING. FIVE HUNDRED THOU¬ 
SAND ACRES OF FOREST IN WHICH THE 
KENIA ELEPHANT LIVES, WANDERS 
AND BRINGS UP HIS CHILDREN 
The peril and excitement of elephant hunting can 
not be realized by any one who has known only the 
big, placid elephants of the circus, or fed peanuts 
to a gentle-eyed pachyderm in the park. To the 
person thus circumscribed in his outlook, the idea 
of killing an elephant and calling it sport is little 
short of criminal. It would seem like going out 
in the barnyard and slaying a friendly old family 
horse. 
That was my point of view before I went to 
Africa, but later experiences caused the point of 
view to shift considerably. If any one thinks that 
elephant hunting is an occasion for lightsome mer¬ 
rymaking he had better not meet the African ele¬ 
phant in the rough. Most people are acquainted 
with only the Indian elephant, the kind commonly 
seen in captivity, and judge from him that the ele¬ 
phant is a sort of semi-domesticated beast of bur¬ 
den, like the camel and the ox. Yet the Indian 
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