and, cautiously advancing to within fifty yards of her, took a careful aim, and gave her a shot behind the shoulder, which brought her to the ground with a crash. Pushing in another cartridge, I ran up, and gave her a shot in the back of the head to make sure of her.” [Illustration: PLATE XIII. AFRICAN ELEPHANT. LEANING AGAINST A TREE. _Pages 17 and 165._] Hunters do not always escape so fortunately as did Mr. Selous. One of the native hunters employed by him, named Quabeet, followed a bull elephant into the bush, and was never seen alive again. The brute must have laid in wait for him, and rushed out, taking him unawares. The bushes around the locality were levelled to the ground; and, when finally the body was discovered, it was torn in three pieces. “The chest, with head and arms attached, which had been wrenched from the trunk just below the breast-bone, lying in one place; one leg and thigh, that had been torn off at the pelvis, in another; and the remainder in a third. The right arm had been broken in two places, and the hand crushed; one of the thighs was also broken; but otherwise the fragment had not been trampled on. There is little reason to doubt,” continues Selous, “that the infuriated elephant must have pressed the unfortunate man down with his foot or knee, and then, twisting his trunk round his body, wrenched him asunder. This feat gives one an idea of the awful strength of these huge beasts, and how powerless the strongest of men.” Sometimes the elephant is attacked with javelins, or spears, and so killed. Dr. Livingstone thus describes an instance that he witnessed:— “I had retired from the noise, to take observations among some rocks of laminated grit, when I beheld an elephant and her calf at the end of a valley, about two miles distant. The calf was rolling in the mud, and the dam was fanning herself with her great ears. As I looked at them through my glass, I saw a long string of my own men approaching on the other side of them. I then went higher up the side of the valley, in order to have a distinct view of their mode of hunting. The goodly beast, totally unconscious of the approach of an enemy, stood for some time suckling her young one, which seemed about two years old: then they went into a pit containing mud, and smeared themselves all over with it; the little one frisking about his dam, flapping his ears, and tossing his trunk incessantly in elephantine fashion. She kept flapping her ears, and wagging her tail, as if in the height of enjoyment. Then began the piping of her enemies, which was performed by blowing into a tube, or the hands closed together, as boys do into a key. They called out, to attract the animal’s attention,— ‘O chief, chief! we have come to kill you: O chief, chief! many others will die beside you; The gods have said it,’ etc.