Description

THE GREATEST of all elephant books by
perhaps the greatest of all elephant hunters,’Karamojo’ ;Bell. The re-issue of this superb account of the author’s African experiences is by wide-spread request, since it has become one of the rarest and most sought-after of big game books, with a theme that is first and foremost elephants,but which includes much exciting material of buffalo, lions, and other game.The author writes of days at the beginning of the century, when there was little or no restriction on the pursuit of big game and when an elephant tusk fetched a tidy sum,when savage tribes were still a menace and African potentates held sway, when there were bands of marauding slavers and vast stretches of unknown territory.Bell was a brilliant shot, and the book is packed with the soundest hunting advice, as well as displaying the author’s deep insight into native ways of life. It is a thrilling pleasure for the reader to be at his side as he wanders in search of game.Lavishly illustrated from on-the-spot sketches by the author.THE most interesting and exciting form of elephant-hunting is the pursuit of the solitary bull. These fine old patriarchs stand close on twelve feet high at the shoulder and weigh from twelve thousand to fourteen thousand pounds or more, and carry tursks from eighty to one hundred and eighty pounds each. They are of great age, probably a hundred or a hundred and fifty years old. These enormous animals spend their days in the densest part of the bush and their nights in destroying native plantations.It is curious that an animal of such a size, and requiring such huge quantities of food, should trouble to eat ground nuts-or peanuts, as they are called in this country. Of course, he does not pick them up singly, but plucks up the plant, shakes off the loose earth and eats the roots with the nuts adhering to them. One can imagine the feelings of a native when he discovers that during the night his plantation has been visited by an elephant.The dense part of the bush where the elephant passes his day is
often within half a mile of his nightly depredations, and it is only through generations of experience that these wicked old animals are enabled to carry on their marauding life. Many bear with them the price of their experience in the shape of bullets and iron spearheads;
the natives set traps for them also, the deadliest one being the falling spear. Of all devices for killing elephants known to primitive man this is the most efficient.