724 
AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 
length of time. Nor are they long silent, for aside from sub¬ 
dued squeaks or growls, and occasional shrill calls, there are 
queer internal rumblings. Their eyes are very bad. Like 
the rhino, they can see only as a very near-sighted man sees. 
At a distance of eighty yards or so, when in dull-colored 
hunting clothes, one can walk slowly toward them or shift 
position without fear of discovery. Even near by, if a man 
is absolutely motionless, he stands a good chance to escape 
observation, although not hidden. But the hearing is good, 
and the sense of smell exquisite. They make many differ¬ 
ent noises, and to none of these ordinary noises do the other 
elephants pay any heed. But there are certain notes, to our 
ears indistinguishable from the others, which signify alarm 
or suspicion, and it is extraordinary to see the instantane¬ 
ous way in which, on the utterance of such a sound, a whole 
herd will first stand motionless and then move away. 
From immemorial ages elephants have been hunted for 
their ivory. Whether the great Egyptian monarchs hunted 
the African elephant is uncertain, although on their Asiatic 
forays they certainly killed the Asiatic elephants which then 
existed in Syria and along the valley of the Euphrates. But 
the big tusks of the African elephants were already at that 
time obtained by barter from the negro tribes south of the 
deserts which border the lower Nile. For thousands of 
years the range of the great beast has slowly shrunk; but the 
slaughter did not become appalling until the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury. In that century, however, the white elephant hunt¬ 
ers, and later the natives to whom the white traders fur¬ 
nished fire-arms, worked huge havoc among the herds, the 
work of destruction being, beyond all comparison, greater 
than ever before. In South Africa, and over immense tracts 
