CHAPTER XV.

THE ELEPHANT, RHINOCEROS, HIPPOPOTAMUS, CAMEL, ZEBRA.

The Great Tropical Pachydermati.—The Elephant: Difference between the tame and wild Elephant-His Instinctive Timidity-Acuteness of His Senses-His Sagacity in Climbing Hills-His wonderful Trunk-His Tusks-Elephant Herds-The Rogue, or Solitary Elephant—The Asiatic and African Species-The African Elephant tamed in Ancient Times— Present Range of the African Elephant-Native Modes of Hunting the African ElephantThe Elephant and the Rifle-Perils of Elephant-Hunters-Elephant-Hunting in Abyssinia— The Asiatic Elephant-Elephant-Hunting in Ceylon-The Panickeas, or Native ElephantHunters Elephantine Head-Work-Obstinate Brutes.-The Rhinoceros :-Range and Character of the Rhinoceros-Two Species, the Black and the White-Size of the RhinocerosAcuteness of its Senses-Its winged Attendant-Its parental Affection-Its nocturnal Habits-Modes of Hunting the Rhinoceros-The One-Horned or Indian Rhinoceros-The Two-Horned Rhinoceros of the Malay Archipelago-Rhinoceros-Paths in Java.-The Hippopotamus:-Is the Hippopotamus the Behemoth of Job?—Habits of the Hippopotamus— Its uncouth Aspect-Rogue Hippopotami-Intelligence of the Hippopotamus-Uses of its Skin and Teeth-Mode of Killing the Hippopotamus.-The Camel: Its Adaptation to the Tropical Sand-Wastes-Its Physical Organization adapted to its Mode of Life-Its Foot and its Stomach-Its Desert Home-The Camel and the Arab-The Two-Humped a 1 One-Humped Camels-The Camel an immemorial Serf-Its Aspect and Temper.-The Giraffe: Beauty of the Giraffe-Its Means of Defense-Its special Organization-The Lion and the Giraffe-The Giraffe known to the Ancients.-Zebra and Quaggas: Their Abundance in Southern Africa-Distinction Between the Quagga and the Zebra-Capacity for Domestication-Their Union for Defense-The Gnu, the Quagga, and the Zebra-The Zebra the Tiger-Horse of the Ancients-The African Boar-The Malayan Babirusa. Finis.

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MONG the animals belonging to the Tropical World there are none more distinctive than the great Pachydermati, the Elephant, the Rhinoceros, and the Hippopotamus. To these huge beasts, the largest that walk the earth, we propose to devote a chapter; supplementing it with a few pages concerning the Giraffe, the Camel, and a few other animals of large size, exclusively tropical. First and foremost we will speak of the Elephant :

A tamed elephant, as we see him in menageries, compelled to go through his round of tricks for the amusement of everybody who will pay the required quarter of a dol lar, is apparently a stupid beast. He seems a very mountain of flesh, covered with a loose and ill-fitting skin. His great, clumsy legs look like those of a gouty alderman; he writhes his huge trunk about with an air of hopeless imbecility; all his energies seem to be concentrated upon the feat of conveying to his mouth the apples and nuts held out to him by gaping urchins. A very different animal is the same elephant in his native haunts. There he is the keenest wariest, and most cunning of beasts. The little sharp eye is alight with intelligence; the ponderous ears are alive to the

faintest sound; the long swaying trunk, merely as an organ of smell, has an acuteness unmatched by the keenest dog that ever tracked game. He has, moreover, a courage, and when irritated, a ferocity, surpassed by no other animal; so that one needs to be a bold and wary hunter who assails him in his native haunts.

Yet, when unmolested by man, who is his chief, and almost only enemy, the elephant is the image of strength and good-nature, loving the shady forest and the secluded lake. Disliking the glare of the midday sun, he spends the day in the thickest woods, devoting the night to excursions and to the luxury of the bath, his great and innocent delight. Though the earth trembles under his strides, yet like the whale, he is timid; but this timidity is accounted for by his small range of vision. Anything unusual strikes him with terror, and the most trivial objects and incidents, from being imperfectly discerned, excite his suspicions. An instinctive consciousness that his superior bulk exposes him to danger from sources that might be harmless in the case of lighter animals is probably the reason why the elephant displays a remarkable reluctance to face the slightest artificial obstruction on his passage. Even when enraged by a wound, he will hesitate to charge his assailant across an intervening hedge, suspecting it may conceal a snare or pitfall, but will hurry along it to seek for an opening. Unlike the horse, he never gets accustomed to the report of fire-arms, and thus he never plays an active part in battle, but serves in a campaign only as a common beast of burden, or for the transport of heavy artillery. To make up for his restricted vision, his neck being so formed as to render him incapable of directing the range of his eye much above the level of his head, he is endowed with a remarkable power of smell, and a delicate sense of hearing, which serve to apprise him of the approach of danger. Although, from their huge bulk, the elephants might be supposed to prefer a level country, yet, in Asia at least, the regions where they most abound are all hilly and mountainous. In Ceylon, particularly, there is not a range so high as to be inaccessible to them, and so sure-footed are they, that provided there be solidity to sustain their weight, they will climb rocks and traverse ledges, where even a mule dare not venture. Hooker admired the judicious winding of the elephant's path in the Himalayas, and Tennent describes the sagacity which he displays in laying out roads, or descending abrupt banks, as almost incredible. His first manoeuvre is to kneel down close to the edge of the declivity, placing his chest to the ground, one fore-leg is then cautiously passed a short way down the slope, and if there is no natural protection to afford a firm footing, he speedily forms one by stamping into the soil, if moist, or kicking out a footing, if dry. This point gained, the other fore-leg is brought down in the same way, and performs the same work, a little in advance of the first, which is thus at liberty to move lower still. Then first one and then the second of the hindlegs is carefully drawn over the side, and the hind-feet in turn occupy the restingplaces previously used and left by the fore ones. The course, however, in such precipitous ground is not straight from top to bottom, but slopes along the face of the bank, descending till the animal gains the level below. This an elephant has done at an angle of forty-five degrees, carrying a houdah, its occupant, his attendant, and in much less time than it takes to describe the operation.

The stomach of the elephant, like that of the camel or the llama, is provided with a cavity, serving most probably as a reservoir for water against the emergencies of thirst; but the most remarkable feature in the organization of the "Leviathan of the

Land" is his wonderful trunk, which, uniting the flexibility of the serpent with a giant's power, almost rivals the human hand by its manifold uses and exquisite delicacy of touch. Nearly eight feet in length and stout in proportion to the massive size of the whole animal, this miracle of nature, at the volition of the elephant will uproot trees or gather grass; raise a piece of artillery or pick up a comfit; kill a man or brush off a fly. It conveys the food to the mouth, and pumps up the enormous draughts of water, which, by its recurvature, are turned into and driven down the capacious throat, or showered over the body. Its length supplies the place of a long neck, which would have been incompatible with the support of the large head and weighty tusks. A glance at the head of the elephant will show the thickness and strength of the trunk at its insertion; and the massy arched bones of the face and thick muscular neck are admirably adapted for supporting and working this incomparable instrument, which is at the same time the elephant's most formidable instrument of defense, for, first prostrating any minor assailant by means of his trunk, he then crushes him by the pressure of his enormous weight.

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The use of the elephant's tusks is less clearly defined. Though they are frequently described as warding off the attacks of the tiger and rhinoceros, often securing the victory by one blow, which transfixes the assailant to the earth, it is perfectly obvious, both from their almost vertical position and the difficulty of raising the head above the level of the shoulder, that they were never designed for weapons of attack. doubt they may prove of great assistance in digging up roots, but that they are far from indispensable, is proved by their being but rarely seen in the females, and by their almost constant absence in the Ceylon elephant, where they are generally found reduced to mere stunted processes.

Elephants live in herds, usually consisting of from ten to twenty individuals, and each herd is a family, not brought together by accident or attachment, but owning a common lineage and relationship. In the forest several herds will browse in close contiguity, and in their expeditions in search of water they may form a body of possi bly one or two hundred, but on the slightest disturbance, each distinct herd hastens to re-form within its own particular circle, and to take measures on its own behalf for retreat or defense. Generally the most vigorous and courageous of the herd assumes the leadership: his orders are observed with the most implicit obedience, and the devotion and loyalty evinced by his followers are very remarkable. In Ceylon this is more readily seen in the case of a "tusker" than any other, because in a herd he is generally the object of the keenest pursuit by the hunters. On such occasions the elephants do their utmost to protect him from danger; when driven to extremity, they place their leader in the centre, and crowd so eagerly in front of him that the sportsmen have to shoot a number which they might otherwise have spared.

When individuals have been expelled from a herd, or by some accident or other have lost their former associates, they are not permitted to attach themselves to any other family, and ever after wander about the woods as outcasts from their kind. Rendered morose and savage from rage and solitude, the rogue elephants become vicious and predatory; and so sullen is their disposition, that although two may be in the same vicinity, there is no known instance of their associating, or of a rogue being seen in company with another elephant. These rogue elephants seem to belong, however, wholly to the Asiatic variety; at least, we find no special mention of them by African

hunters. Mr. S. G. Baker, now Sir Samuel Baker, since noted for his exploration of the source of the Nile, was long ago a noted elephant-hunter in Ceylon, and his book "The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon " abounds with incidents of adventure and daring in shooting these rogues. "Deprived," he says," of the ameliorating influence of female society, the old rogue becomes doubly vicious. He appears to be in bad humor with the world generally, and with himself in particular, spending the greatest part of his time when not feeding, in pacing back and forth, with his tail cocked in the air, ready for a rush upon any one that approaches his haunts." Their pluck is equal to their cunning. When they travel in the day-time, they always go with the wind, and, nothing can follow on their track without their knowledge. When the rogue is pursued in the open forest or on the naked plain he usually retreats; but the chances are ten to one that he is merely enticing the hunter to follow him into some favorite haunt among the dense jungle, from which he will charge at some unexpected moment.

The elephant inhabits both Asia and Africa, but each of these two parts of the world has its peculiar species. The African elephant is distinguished by the lozenge-shaped prominences of ivory and enamel on the surface of his grinders, which in the Indian elephant are narrow, tranverse bars of uniform breadth; his skull has a more rounded form, and is deficient in the double lateral bump conspicuous in the former; and he has only fifty-four vertebræ, while the Indian has sixty-one. On the other hand, he possesses twenty-one ribs, while the latter has only nineteen. His tusks are also much larger, and his body is of much greater bulk, as the female attains the stature of the full-grown Indian male. The ear is at least three times the size, being not seldom above four feet long, and broad, so that Dr. Livingstone mentions having seen a negro, who under cover of one of these prodigious flaps effectually screened himself from the rain. All these differences of character appeared so great to M. Cuvier as to induce him to consider the African elephant as a peculiar genus.

Ancient medals representing large-eared elephants drawing chariots, are conclusive of the fact that the Romans knew how to catch and tame the African elephant. He was even considered more docile than the Asiatic, and was taught various feats, as walking on ropes and dancing. The elephants with which Hannibal crossed the Alps, as well as those which Pyrrhus led into Italy, must undoubtedly have been African. At present he is only killed for his ivory, his hide, his flesh, or from the mere wantonness of destruction. The Cape colonists, to whom his services might be of great importance, have never made the attempt to tame him, nor has one of this species ever been exhibited in England; but the big-eared, large-tusked African elephant is the one best known in American menageries.

The African elephant has a very wide range, from Caffraria to Nubia, and from the Zambesi to Cape Verde, and the impenetrable deserts of the Sahara alone prevent him from wandering to the shores of the Mediterranean. Although in South Africa the persecutions of the natives, and of his still more formidable enemies the colonists and English huntsmen, have considerably thinned his numbers, and driven him farther and farther to the north, yet in the interior of the country he is still met with in prodigious numbers. Dr. Barth frequently saw large herds winding through the open plains, and swimming in majestic lines through the rivers, with elevated trunks, or bathing in the shallow lakes for coolness or protection against insects.

Livingstone gives us many interesting accounts of the different modes of South

African elephant-hunting. The natives of the south bank of the Zambesi erect stages on high trees overhanging the paths by which the elephants come, and then use a large spear with a handle nearly as thick as a man's wrist, and four or five feet long. When the unfortunate animal comes beneath, they throw the spear, and if it enters between the ribs above, as the blade is at least twenty inches long by two broad, the motion of the handle, as it is aided by knocking against the trees, makes frightful gashes within, and soon causes death. They kill them also by means of a spear inserted in a beam of wood, which being suspended on the branch of a tree by a cord attached to a latch, fastened in the path and intended to be struck by the animal's foot, leads to the fall of the beam, and the spear being poisoned causes death in a few hours. The Bushmen select full-moon nights for the chase, on account of the coolness, and choose the moment succeeding a charge, when the elephant is out of breath, to run in and give him a stab with their long-bladed spears. The huge creature is often bristling with missile weapons like a porcupine, and though singly none of the wounds may be mortal, yet their number overpowers him by loss of blood. On the sloping banks of the Zouga the Bayeiye dig deep pitfalls to entrap the animals as they come to drink; but though these traps are constructed with all the care of savage ingenuity, old elephants have been known to precede the herd and whisk off their coverings all the way down to the water; or, giving proof of a still more astonishing sagacity, to have actually lifted the young out of the pits into which they had incautiously stumbled.

A much more formidable enemy of this noble animal than the spears or pitfalls of the African barbarians is the rifle, particularly in the hands of a European marksman; for while the Griquas, Boers, and Bechuanas generally stand at the distance of a hundred yards or more, and of course spend all the force of their bullets on the air, the English hunters, relying on their steadiness of aim, approach to within thirty yards of the animal, where they are sure not to waste their powder. It requires no little nerve to brave the charge of the elephant, the scream or trumpeting of the brute, when infuriated, being more like what the shriek of a steam-whistle would be to a man standing on the dangerous part of a railroad, than any other earthly sound; a horse unused to it will sometimes stand shivering instead of taking his rider out of danger, or fall paralyzed by fear, and thus expose him to be trodden into a mummy, or, dashing against a tree, crack his skull against a branch.

Even the most experienced hunters have many dangers to encounter while facing their gigantic adversary. Thus, on the banks of the Zouga in 1850, Mr. Oswell had one of the most extraordinary escapes from a wounded elephant perhaps ever recorded in the annals of the chase. Pursuing the brute into the dense thick thorny bushes met with on the margin of that river, and to which the elephant usually flees for safety, he followed through a narrow pathway by lifting up some of the branches, and forcing his way through the rest; but when he had just got over this difficulty, he saw the elephant, whose tail he had but got glimpses of before, now rushing full speed towards him. There was then no time to lift up the branches, so he tried to force his horse through them. He could not effect a passage, and as there was but an instant between the attempt and failure, the hunter tried to dismount; but in doing this, one foot was caught by a branch, and the spur drawn along the animal's flank; this made him spring away, and throw the rider to the ground with his face to the elephant, which, being in full chase, still went on. Mr. Oswell saw the huge fore foot about to