HUNTING ELEPHANT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15521, 31 January 1914, Page 5 (Supplement)

HUNTING ELEPHANT.

PERILS \ OF ; THE PURSUIT. In " Hunting the Elephant in Africa" Captain. C. H. Stigahd gives the result of 13 years of perilous experience. He did not always succeed in securing tho animal that" was being hunted. In. regard to one incident of this kind, he writes:"lt is difficult to-combine. the..absorbing task of hunting elephants with a conscientious performance of one's work, . and ,if one tries to the'chances are, one does : both badly. .In this case I was unaßle to devote'another, day to the following. of the wounded elephant. 'It was the two paths which defeated the old hyena,' said one of the Swaliilis to console me for my disappointment, referring to a folk-lore story in which a hyena came to the fork of two paths and could not make up his mind which to take. Finally his right legs'tried to take the right-hand path, and his left the left-hand one, and he split in two."

On at least one occasion - the hunter became the hunted. "I dodged sharply to my right, thinking that the elephant would pass and I would get a side shot as he did so, but I tripped over a fallen treeperhaps one '. he had . pulled down earlier in .the day. I went sprawling, dropping my rifle, and just managed to seize it •by the muzzle as the elephant was about to tread on it. ■ I then dived head foremost into the. branches of the fallen tree. I made frantic efforts to crawl through, but a stout branch resisted my progress, and at the same' moment the galongwa pushed in after me, and pushed me through the branches'' to the other side. Two drops of blood from his forehead fell on my. shorts— on the thigh and one on the knee. Instead of pushing me straight through in ' front of him, though, he kicked me sideways- The impetus he gave me bent aside the stubborn branch, and the next moment - I found myself crawling out on hands and knees on one side of the tree, with rifle still grasped by the muzzie, whilst the elephant was executing a dance and stamping up the ground the other side, five yards from me, evidently thinking that "I was under his feet."

The kind of ground the hunter has to travel through is indicated in the following passage:— These paths consist of a number of uneven holes made by the feet of elephants. It is impossible to see one's foothold owing to mud and water. At one moment one sinks into a deep hole, and the next one strikes a mound under water. Worse still, it is when one treads just on the edge of one of these deep.elephant footprints and slides suddenly to the bottom, clutching wildly at the reeds on either side. On recovering one's balance one's hands are covered with a downlike, growth -of hundreds of minute little hairs, which have ' come off the stem of the reeds and enter the pores of the skin sufficiently to cause irritation, especially when anything is handled." An illusion dear the boy reader of tales of adventure is thus destroyed:—" One's first idea of the savage as a warrior, tracker, and bushman is generally founded on boys' tales of West Indians. The disillusionment is disappointing when it is found ' that he is neither lynx-eyed, stealthy, cunning, quick-witted, or quick of hearing, and that be is a wonderfully bad. marksman with the poor weapons ho has. Practically the only things in which ho. is reallv, remarkable are his powers of enduring the rays of the fierce sun and the way he has of getting through thick country at a rapid pace, especially when escaping from anything."