CHAPTER XIV 
HUNTING ON LAKE SOLAI 
CHANCE OR SKILL ? 
The operation of extracting the tusks from the 
massive rocky cranium of an elephant can be effected 
in two ways. The more expeditious method is to hew 
them out with hatchets; but this necessarily involves 
some injury to the ivory, one-third of which is embedded 
in the bone. By allowing three or four days to elapse, 
decomposition will have loosened the hold and the teeth 
can then be drawn out. 
Being in no special hurry, we elected to await the 
latter result, the more readily as we found ourselves in 
a lovely situation, commanding within reach of our 
camp both wood and water, mountain, marsh and plain. 
We decided to spend a week exploring our environment 
and its wild life. 
This decision caused general joy among our men, 
who were gorging on elephant-meat. Strangely, they 
preferred the internals, and had driven a “ drift ” like 
a mine-shaft through the ribs, thereby entering bodily 
into the interior and excavating the coveted titbits. 
We had thought of experimenting on the trunk our¬ 
selves, till informed that only after forty-eight hours’ 
cooking would the meat be soft enough to cut with a 
hatchet. We contented ourselves with the undercut of 
hartebeest and cutlets from some delicious little stein- 
bucks and oribi that W—— had shot on the hill. 
On one of these days I was specially pleased to 
secure a fine cock ostrich, breaking the thigh at 200 
yards—thus killing the biggest bird on earth and the 
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