238 ELEPHANT-HUNTING [ch. x 
fields, when they do so at all, only at night, and before 
daybreak move back into the forest to rest. Elsewhere 
they sometimes spend the day in the open, in grass or 
low bush. Where we were, at this time, on Kenia, the 
elephants sometimes moved down at night to feed in 
the shambas, at the expense of the crops of the natives, 
and sometimes stayed in the forest, feeding, by day or 
night, on the branches they tore off the trees, or, occa¬ 
sionally, on the roots they grubbed up with their tusks. 
They work vast havoc among the young or small growth 
of a forest, and the readiness with which they uproot, 
overturn, or break off medium-sized trees conveys a 
striking impression of their enormous strength. I have 
seen a tree a foot in diameter thus uprooted and over¬ 
turned. 
The African elephant has never, like his Indian kins¬ 
man, been trained to man’s use. There is still hope that 
the feat may be performed ; but hitherto its probable 
economic usefulness has for various reasons seemed so 
questionable that there has been scant encouragement 
to undergo the necessary expense and labour. Up to 
the present time the African elephant has yielded only 
his ivory as an asset of value. This, however, has been of 
such great value as wellnigh to bring about the mighty 
beast’s utter extermination. Ivory hunters and ivory 
traders have penetrated Africa to the haunts of the 
elephant since centuries before our era, and the elephant’s 
boundaries have been slowly receding throughout historic 
time; but during the century just past the narrowing 
process has been immensely accelerated, until now 
there are but one or two out-of-the-way nooks of the 
Dark Continent to which hunter and trader have not 
penetrated. Fortunately the civilized powers which 
now divide dominion over Africa have waked up in 
