538 
UNGULATES. 
shots, which they perhaps mistake for thunder. When first starting, they make off* 
at a rapid pace, hut soon settle down to a steady walk. 
In shooting single tuskers, it is advisable that the sportsmen should be at his 
work betimes, as in the case of bulls belonging to a herd they usually rejoin their 
companions by eight or nine in the morning. When such solitary animals are 
feeding, the noise they make allows of a close approach without much risk of 
discovery. Bulls that are permanently solitary usually rest at about ten o’clock, 
and after that time may be found asleep, either lying down, or resting against the 
trunk of a tree. When first disturbed, one of these solitary tuskers makes off with 
a tremendous rush, but soon subsides into a walk, when he proceeds so quietly that 
he may disappear without the sportsman being in the least aware of it. 
The following account of the death of a tusker, by Sanderson, gives some idea 
of the danger often encountered in this kind of sport. The narrator writes, that 
having ascertained that the herd comprised about fifty head, “ a shrill trumpeting 
and crashing of bamboos about two hundred yards to our left broke the stillness, 
and from the noise we knew it was a tusker-fight. We ran towards the place 
where the sounds of combat were increasing every moment: a deep ravine at last 
only separated us from the combatants, and we could see the tops of the bamboos 
bowing as the monsters bore each other backwards and forwards with a crashing 
noise in their tremendous struggles. As we ran along the bank of the nalla to find 
a crossing, one elephant uttered a deep roar of pain, and crossed the nalla some 
forty yards in advance of us, to our side. Here he commenced to destroy a bamboo- 
clump (the bamboos in these hills have a very large hollow, and are weak and 
comparatively worthless) in sheer fury, grumbling deeply the while with rage and 
pain. Blood was streaming from a deep stab in his left side, high up. He was a 
very large elephant, with long and fairly thick tusks, and with much white about 
the forehead ; the left tusk was some inches shorter than the right. The opponent 
of this Goliath must have been a monster indeed to have worsted him. An 
elephant-fight, if the combatants are well matched, frequently lasts for a day or 
more, a round being fought every now and then. The beaten elephant retreats 
temporarily, followed leisurely by the other, until by mutual consent they meet 
again. The more powerful elephant occasionally keeps his foe in view till he 
perhaps kills him; otherwise, the beaten elephant betakes himself off for good on 
finding he has the worst of it. Tails are frequently bitten off in these encounters. 
This mutilation is common amongst rogue-elephants, and amongst the females in a 
herd; in the latter case it is generally the result of rivalry amongst themselves. 
The wounded tusker was evidently the temporarily-beaten combatant of the occa¬ 
sion, and I have seldom seen such a picture of power and rage as he presented, 
mowing the bamboos down with trunk and tusks, and bearing the thickest part 
over with his fore-feet. Suddenly his whole demeanour changed. He backed from 
the clump and stood like a statue. Not a sound broke the sudden stillness for an 
instant. His antagonist was silent, wherever he was. Now the tip of his trunk 
came slowly round in our direction, and I saw that we were discovered to his fine 
sense of smell. We had been standing silently behind a thin bamboo-clump, 
watching him, and when I first saw that he had winded us, I imagined he might 
take himself off. But his frenzy quite overcame all fear for the moment; forward 
