The Africans hunt the elephant for the sake of his ivory and flesh; in India, and the isles of the Indian Ocean, to reduce them to subjection. In Africa, for many negro populations, ivory and "ebony wood" (an euphuism by which the slave-dealers designate their black slaves) are the sole articles of commerce, and the majority of the English, Dutch, and French colonists carry on a considerable traffic in elephants' teeth. The negroes excavate wide pits which they cover over with branches; and the elephants falling into them are precipitated headlong upon sharpened stakes; or they kill them either with arrows, assegays, or musketry. Hunting them with spears is truly a ferocious pastime. The poor elephant only succumbs after receiving so great a number of projectiles that his body resembles an enormous porcupine. He rarely turns upon his aggressors; he seeks to fly; he fills the air with plaintive wailings; the female throws her huge bulk between her young ones and the enemy; the male sometimes rushes furiously upon his assailants, and woe to the latter if he overtake them; he crushes them under his hoofs, he pierces them with his tusks, or seizes them with his trunk, and dashes them upon the earth a shapeless and bleeding mass. But nimble and experienced hunters easily elude his charge, whose onset he is prevented from moderating by his weight, or from rapidly changing its direction. [Illustration: HUNTING THE ELEPHANT IN AFRICA.] But firearms, and especially the recently perfected rifles, are assuredly the best weapons to employ against the leviathan. With a Westley-Richards, for instance, a good marksman, aiming at the shoulder-joint or the ear, is certain to bring down his game; he may post himself at a distance, and avoid exposure, while the victim is saved from a cruel agony. Ivory is not the only valuable product which the elephant yields; his hide, very thick and very tenacious, can be utilized for many purposes. The bucklers made of it by the negroes are scarcely less precious than the shield of Ajax, which was formed of a bull's hide sevenfold. The animal's flesh is also eaten, although too tough and too strongly flavoured for an European palate. In India and the Indian islands the chase is carried on to make prisoners, and not victims. Its most remarkable feature is the important and almost indispensable assistance which the tame elephants render man against their wild brethren, zealously aiding to reduce them into slavery; now serving as baits to beguile and attract, and now as gendarmes, or rather as convict-warders, to compel their obedience. In Ceylon, elephant-hunting is almost an affair of State; it is like a national war, in which the Government appeals to the goodwill of the population generally, both Europeans and natives.