The colony has been blessed with prosperity, and the gradual
decrease of game is a natural consequence of extended cultivation and
increased population.
In the pages of this book it will be seen that I foretold the
destruction of the wild deer and other animals twenty years ago. At that
time the energetic Tamby's or Moormen were possessed of guns, and had
commenced a deadly warfare in the jungles, killing the wild animals as a
matter of business, and making a livelihood by the sale of dried flesh,
hides, and buffalo-horns. This unremitting slaughter of the game during
all seasons has been most disastrous, and at length necessitated the
establishment of laws for its protection.
As the elephants have decreased in Ceylon, so in like manner their
number must be reduced in Africa by the continual demand for ivory.
Since the 'Rifle and Hound' was written, I have had considerable
experience with the African elephant.
This is a distinct species, as may be seen by a comparison with the
Indian elephant in the Zoological Gardens of the Regent's Park.
In Africa, all elephants are provided with tusks; those of the females
are small, averaging about twenty pounds the pair. The bull's are
sometimes enormous. I have seen a pair of tusks that weighed 300 lbs.,
and I have met with single tusks of 160 lbs. During this year (1874) a
tusk was sold in London that weighed 188 lbs. As the horns of deer vary
in different localities, so the ivory is also larger and of superior
quality in certain districts. This is the result of food and climate.
The average of bull elephant's tusks in equatorial Africa is about 90
lbs. or 100 lbs. the pair.
It is not my intention to write a treatise upon the African elephant;
this has been already described in the `Nile Tributaries of
Abyssinia,'*(* Published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co.) but it will be
sufficient to explain that it is by no means an easy beast to kill when
in the act of charging. From the peculiar formation of the head, it is
almost impossible to kill a bull elephant by the forehead shot; thus the
danger of hunting the African variety is enhanced tenfold.
The habits of the African elephant are very different from those of his
Indian cousins. Instead of retiring to dense jungles at sunrise, the
African will be met with in the mid-day glare far away from forests,
basking in the hot prairie grass of ten feet high, which scarcely
reaches to his withers.
Success in elephant shooting depends materially upon the character of
the ground.
