Here is an example of a beast (a young one too) possessing abstracted sentiments to a very high degree. By its flight on the first appearance of the hunters, it is plain it apprehended danger to itself, it also reflected upon that of its mother, which was the cause of its return to her assistance. This affection or duty, or let us call it any thing we please, except instinct, was stronger than the fear of danger; and it must have conquered that fear by reflection before it returned, when it resolved to make its best and last efforts, for it never attempted to fly afterwards. I freely forgive that part of my readers, who know me and themselves so little, as to think I believe it worth my while to play the mountebank, for the great honour of diverting them; an honour far from being of the first rate in my esteem. If they should shew, in this place, a degree of doubt, that, for once, I am making use of the privilege of travellers, and dealing a little in the marvellous, it would be much more to the credit of their discernment, than their prodigious scruples about the reality or possibility of eating raw flesh; a thing that has been recorded by the united testimony of all that ever visited Abyssinia for these two hundred years, has nothing unreasonable in itself, though contrary to our practice in other cases; and can only be called in question now, through weakness, ignorance, or an intemperate desire to find fault, by those that believed that a man could get into a quart bottle. What I relate of the young elephant contains difficulties of another kind; though I am very well persuaded some will swallow it easily, who cannot digest the raw flesh. In both instances I adhere strictly to the truth; and I beg leave to assure those scrupulous readers, that if they knew their author, they would think that his having invented a lie, solely for the pleasure of diverting them, was much more improbable than either of the two foregoing facts. He places his merit in having accomplished these travels in general, not in being present at any one incident during the course of them; the believing of which can reflect no particular honour upon himself, nor the disbelieving it any sort of disgrace in the minds of liberal and unprejudiced men. It is for these only he would wish to write, and these are the only persons who can profit from his narrative. The Agageers having procured as much meat as would maintain them a long time, could not be persuaded to continue the hunting any longer. Part of them remained with the she-elephant, which seemed to be the fattest; tho' the one they killed first was by much the most valuable, on account of its long teeth. It was still alive, nor did it seem an easy operation to kill it, without the assistance of our Agageers, even though it was totally helpless, except with its trunk.