circumference of the foot is the height of an elephant;
there is no such rule that can be depended upon,
as their feet vary in -size without any relative proportion
to the height of the animal.
A most interesting fact had occurred: when I
found the larger elephant, killed by the “ Baby,” I
noticed an old wound unhealed and full of matter
in the front of the left shoulder; the bowels were
shot through, and were green in various places.
Florian suggested that it must be an elephant that
I had wounded at Wat el Negur; we tracked the
course of the bullet most carefully, until we at
length discovered my unmistakeable bullet of quicksilver
and lead, almost uninjured, in the fleshy
part of the thigh, imbedded in an unhealed wound.
Thus, by a curious chance, upon my first interview
with African elephants by daylight, I had killed
the identical elephant that I had wounded at Wat
el Negur forty-three days ago in the dhurra plantation,
twenty-eight miles distant! B'oth these elephants
were females. It was the custom of these active
creatures to invade the dhurra fields from this great
distance, and to return to these almost impenetrable
thorny jungles, where they were safe from the attack
of the aggageers, but not from the rifles.
On our return to camp, the rejoicings were great;
the women yelled as usual, and I delighted the
Hamrans by dividing the meat, and- presenting them
with the hides for shields. I gave Abou Do, and
all the hunters, and my camel drivers, large quantities
of fat; and I found that I was accredited as a
brother hunter by the knights of the sword, who
acknowledged that their weapons were useless in
the thick jungles of Tooleet, the name of the place
where we had killed the elephants.