Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIV Fresh news of elephants--Elephant shooting--Twenty-five horsemen will chatter--A herd at last!--A wild chase--Rifles or spears? --Somali faith in fire-arms. We were all in bed the following morning when news arrived that elephants had been observed close to the camp. So we up and dressed quickly, and after a hasty snatch at breakfast, we mounted, and a few miles from our tents reached a genuine and freshlymade elephant track. There it lay before us, a regular path a yard broad, and strewn at intervals with dung still warm and steaming. Freshly-broken branches and small sheaves of grass, which the elephants in their wanton way had torn up with the intention of consuming, and then dropped, as something more succulent came within their reach, marked the route taken by the stately procession of the monsters. I know few animals more entertaining to watch than elephants. They are so quaintly eccentric, and use WISE DECREES ABOUT ELEPHANTS 147 their strength in such a quiet and gentlemanly manner. To watch an elephant pick up a single straw, and with extraordinary gravity place it on his enormous head is comical in the extreme! Another peculiarity is their intense dislike to a dog, however small; this is the more strange when many will withstand a charge by a tiger without flinching. Elephants in Somaliland used to be plentiful enough, but the shooting of cows has sadly diminished their numbers. Year by year they are getting forced further and further away into the interior, and have quite disappeared from the usual track taken by the globetrotting sportsman with his army of followers. The authorities of the Somali Protectorate at Aden have, however, among other wise decrees, attempted to limit each sportsman to shooting not more...
