African elephant

“ The Indian native princes do not admire the African elephant, as it combines many points which are objectionable to their peculiar ideas of elephantine proportions. According to their views, the hollow back of an African elephant would amount to a deformity. The first time that I ever saw a large male of that variety I was of the same opinion. I was hunting with the Hamran Arabs in a wild and uninhabited portion of Abyssinia, along the banks of the Settite river, which is the main stream of the Atbara, the chief affluent of the Nile. ”

“ It is probably not true that the African elephant cannot be domesticated. In fact, somewhere in the Congo is a farm where fifty tame elephants, just as amenable as those in India, are at work. But taming elephants is not a sound proposition economically. Elephant farming is a prince's game, and Africa has no princes to play it. An elephant requires hundreds of acres of land, infinitely more than cattle and sheep and the other domesticated animals. So it is that as man moves on the land, the elephant must move off. ”

“ The girth of the fore-foot when the pressure of the animal's weight was exerted, was exactly half the perpendicular height of the elephant. I have seen very much larger animals in Africa, but there is nothing in India to approach the size of Jumbo.
There is no reason why the African elephants should not be tamed and made useful, but the difficulty lies in obtaining them in any great numbers. The natives of Africa are peculiarly savage, and their instincts of destruction prevent them from capturing and domesticating any wild animals. ”

“ Experienced travellers tell us that in a few years the African elephant will be entirely extinct. It is to be hoped that measures will be taken to protect some of the herds before it is too late. It is a well known fact that districts on the East Coast of Africa that had large herds of elephants a few years ago have none to-day, and the blame is almost entirely to be laid at the doors of the white man. A single hunter, armed with an express rifle, can soon kill an elephant, or even several in a day ; whereas, it takes half a native tribe to run down and kill a single specimen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The tame elephant would be especially valuable to an explorer, as it could march through streams too deep for the passage of oxen, and in swimming rivers it would be proof against the attacks of crocodiles. So few African elephants have been tamed in proportion to those of Asia that it would be difficult to pronounce an opinion upon their character when domesticated, but it is generally believed by their trainers that the Indian species is more gentle and amenable to discipline. The power of the African is far in excess of the Asiatic. ”

“ It is much to be regretted that no system has been organised in Africa for capturing and training the wild elephants, instead of harrying them to destruction. In a country where beasts of burden are unknown, as in equatorial Africa, it appears incredible that the power and the intelligence of the elephant have been completely ignored. The ancient coins of Carthage exhibit the African elephant, which in those remote days was utilised by the Carthaginians; but a native of Africa, if of the Negro type, will never tame an animal, he only destroys. ”

“ Most elephant-hunts in Equatorial Africa run on just such lines as these and with the same result, yet they are among the finest and most interesting experiences that any sportsman or naturalist can hope to have. The wealth of natural life that had been given to my eyes during those three days was simply overpowering. But if you have once succeeded in getting within range of an African elephant, all other kinds of wild animals seem small fry to you. ”

“ No negro tribe really likes to handle elephants and train them. The Indian native loves elephants, and enjoys training them and working with them. It is these two conditions that have left the African elephant far behind the procession. The African elephant belongs to the great Undeveloped Continent. He has been, and he still is, mercilessly pursued and slaughtered for his tusks. All the existing species of African elephants are going down and out before the ivory hunters. We fear that they will all be dead one hundred years from this time, or even less. ”

“ That was my point of view before I went to Africa, but later experiences caused the point of view to shift considerably. If any one thinks that elephant hunting is an occasion for lightsome merrymaking he had better not meet the African elephant in the rough. Most people are acquainted with only the Indian elephant, the kind commonly seen in captivity, and judge from him that the elephant is a sort of semi-domesticated beast of burden, like the camel and the ox. Yet the Indian elephant is about as much like his African brother as a tomcat is like a tiger. ”

“ An African elephant is smaller, as well as more cunning and wild, than the Asiatic. Accordingly, the sportsman is often obliged to circumvent his game during several days, for it is said that in populous districts, its instincts are so keen as to afford warning of the neighborhood of fire-arms, even at extraordinary distances. The common and most effectual mode of enticing an elephant within reach of a ball, is to strew the forest for several miles with pine-apples, whose flavor and fragrance infallibly bewitch him. ”

“ The African elephant affects the succulent mimosa, and larger shoots and branches than its cousin, its teeth being fitted for a coarser diet. They are, according to Drummond, particularly fond of the fruit of the unganu-tree, which seems to intoxicate them; as they stagger about, performing the most remarkable antics for a clumsy beast; often trumpeting so loudly that they can be heard for miles, and sometimes engaging in terrific encounters. ”

“ The African elephant is a very different animal from its Asiatic cousin, both as regards structure and habits; and were it not for the existence of intermediate extinct species, might well be regarded as the representative of a distinct genus. ”

“ The African Elephant has a head much rounder and less broad than the Asiatic Elephant. Its ears are very much longer and its tusks are generally stronger.
African Elephants live like those of India, in troops more or less numerous ”

“ The African Elephant, E. africanus, has been sometimes referred to a distinct genus or sub-genus, Loxodon, by reason of the lozenge-shaped areas on the worn grinding-teeth. It lives, as its name denotes, in Africa. This species has a number of external features which enable it to be distinguished from the Oriental Elephant. The head slopes back more, and has not the two rounded bosses which give so wise a countenance to the Indian species. The ears are very much larger. ”

“ The White Elephants, held in reverence in Siam, and extremely rare, are not distinct from the rest; they are merely albinoes, or white varieties, and are to be viewed in the same light as white Blackbirds or white Sparrows.
THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT [259] is distinguished at once from the Indian species by the great size of its ears, its larger eye, convex forehead, darker colour of its skin, and by possessing only three instead of four nails or hoofs in the hind foot. It is indigenous to Africa, being found south of the Sahara as far as Cape Colony, and from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. ”

“ The African elephant must be decreasing, even as it has been extirpated in the north of that continent, where it abounded in the time of the Carthaginians, and the time may come when ivory shall be counted as one of the precious things of the past. ”