The Agageer nearest me presently lamed his elephant, and left him standing. Ayto Engedan, Ayto Confu, Guebra Mariam, and several others, fixed their spears in the other, before the Agageer had cut his tendons. My Agageer, however, having wounded the first elephant, failed in the pursuit of the second, and, being close upon him at entering the wood, he received a violent blow from a branch of a tree which the elephant had bent by his weight, and, after passing, allowed it to replace itself, when it knocked down both the riders, and very much hurt the horse. This, indeed, is the great danger in elephant-hunting; for some of the trees, that are dry and short, break, by the violent pressure of so immense a body moving so rapidly, and fall upon the pursuers, or across the roads. But the greatest number of these trees, being of a succulent quality, they bend without breaking, and return quickly to their former position, when they strike both horse and man so violently, that they often beat them to pieces, and scatter them upon the plain. Dextrous, too, as the riders are, the elephant sometimes reaches them with his trunk, with which he dashes the horse against the ground, and then sets his feet upon him, till he tears him limb from limb with his proboscis; a great many hunters die this way. Besides this, the soil, at this time of the year, is split into deep chasms, or cavities, by the heat of the sun, so that nothing can be more dangerous than the riding. The elephant once slain, they cut the whole flesh off his bones into thongs, like the reins of a bridle, and hang these, like festoons, upon the branches of trees, till they become perfectly dry, without salt, and they then lay them by for their provision in the season of the rains. I need say nothing of the figure of the elephant, his form is known, and anecdotes of his life and character are to be found everywhere. But his description, at length, is given, with his usual accuracy and elegance, by that great master of natural history the Count de Buffon, my most venerable, learned, and amiable friend, the Pliny of Europe, and the true portrait of what a man of learning and fashion should be. I shall only take upon me to resolve a difficulty which he seems to have had,--for what use the teeth of the elephant, and the horns of the rhinoceros, were intended. He, with reason, explodes the vulgar prejudice, that these arms were given them by Nature to fight with each other. He asks very properly, What can be the ground of that animosity? neither of them are carnivorous; they do not couple together, therefore are not rivals in love; and, as for food, the vast forests they inhabit furnish them with an abundant and everlasting store.