FOLLOWING THE ELEPHANTS--CUTTING OUT THE TUSKS--HUNTING THE HERD OF
ELEPHANTS.
The sun's rays had scarcely commenced illuminating the eastern horizon,
when the hunters were up, and making their preparations for the start.
The plan of hunting which they had adopted, was to enter the country
with waggons, oxen, and horses; to leave their waggons at a good
outspanning-place where there was plenty of water and forage for the
cattle; then to scour the country round and search for game, or spoor,
which if found, the horses, oxen, and waggons were brought up, and the
elephants hunted on horseback. The elephant is so formidable an animal,
and usually is so fierce, especially when wounded and hunted, that few
African sportsmen venture to follow him on foot into his dense woody
retreats. It is customary to drive the herd, when discovered, into the
most open country, this driving being accomplished either by setting
fire to the dried grass, by making large bonfires, or by discharging
fire-arms, and thus causing the herds to leave a secure retreat for one
less sheltered. It is not unfrequently a matter of two or three days,
to drive elephants into a good and favourable country; and upon this
driving being judiciously carried out, much of the success of the hunt
depends. There are very many men whose livelihood depends entirely on
elephant hunting. They farm but little, have few cattle, but devote
their time mainly to hunting; and in a country so untrodden as was
Africa some years ago, there was no want of game, and thus a man
provided with horse, gun, powder, and lead, might live independent of
almost all else.
Hans Sterk was a man who had been devoted to sport from his childhood.
His father was a Dutchman who had early in his colonial career gone upon
the outskirts of civilisation, and had been one of the pioneers to slay
the wild beasts, and teach the savage man that the white man is the
master over the black. Hans' mother was an English woman, an emigrant
who had ventured into Africa, and had there found a home. But both his
parents had been cruelly murdered by the Kaffirs in one of their attacks
upon the colonists; and at a very early age he had found himself owner
of a waggon, some spans of oxen, a few head of cattle and horses, and
had thus every means at his disposal for indulging in hunting; and as
his taste led him in pursuit of the elephant, he soon became famed as an
unerring marksman, an expert spoorer, and one of the most determined
elephant hunters. On more than one occasion also he had distinguished
himself in commandoes against the Kaffir tribes. Thus before he was
twenty he had obtained a reputation for skill and bravery, and at that
age was known as Hans Sterk, the elephant hunter. How well he deserved
the title, the result of his day's sport just related amply shows.
The morning after Hans' return to the sleeping-place was fine, and well
suited for spooring or shooting. There had been a heavy dew, and the
wind was light, so that no extra noises disturbed the bushes, and
rendered the feeding of an elephant inaudible, or the rush of a wild
beast undistinguishable from the rustling of the forest branches. Hans
had sent one of his Kaffirs to the waggons, to announce to the men there
the death of four elephants, and to bring such aid as was requisite to
cut out the tusks, and convey them to the waggons. He then with his
white companions started on his footsteps of the previous night towards
the ground where his elephants had fallen. Having with him a hatchet
and knife, and aided by 'Nquane and his friend Bernhard, he proceeded to
extract the tusks of his first elephant. The animal had fallen
backwards, so that it lay in a very good attitude to be operated on; and
Hans, taking his hatchet, cut down each side of the elephant's trunk, so
that at last this appendage could be turned completely over its head.
The roots of the tusks were thus exposed to view, and were next attacked
with the hatchet, the ends fixed in the jaws being loosened and cut off,
by means of a fulcrum made from a large branch of a tree. The tusks
were then worked up and down, and the hatchet applied to sever those
parts which held most tenaciously, until the tusks were quite loose in
the jaw, and could then be extracted with a good pull. About one-third
of an elephant's tusk is embedded in its jaw, and this part being filled
up with muscles and nerves is hollow, and has to be cleaned out before
it is inserted in the waggon. A tooth, as a tusk is called by elephant
hunters, weighs about ten per cent, heavier when it is first taken from
an elephant's jaw, than when it becomes dry from keeping. Very few
elephants' tusks exceed 100 pounds in weight each, the average size of a
good pair of tusks being from 100 to 150 pounds. Sometimes, however, a
marvellous old bull, or one who has developed his teeth in a wonderful
way, is found, whose teeth weigh nearly 130 pounds each; but such
patriarchs are rarely met with.
The country in which elephants are found in abundance is usually thinly
inhabited, and the natives are not possessed of fire-arms in great
abundance or of much value. Thus the elephant, being a dangerous animal
to hunt and hard to kill, often remains in forests when the more timid
game of the open country has been driven away. But when English or
Dutch sportsmen have visited a country, they usually wound mortally many
more elephants than they kill and find, and thus the Kaffirs, who follow
up and find the wounded animals, drive a very fair trade in elephants'
tusks, of which they soon understand the true value. Thus a party of
hunters not unfrequently return from a three or four months'
shooting-trip into the interior with from two to three thousand pounds'
weight of ivory. There is, however, considerable risk in this sport
when looked at from its mercantile point of view. It may happen that
the country to which the hunters have travelled has been temporarily
deserted by elephants in consequence of hunters having just previously
hunted that ground, or from a scarcity of water. The horse or cattle
sickness may attack the hunter's quadrupeds, and thus, even if his
waggons be full, he may have to leave them behind whilst he returns some
four or five hundred miles to re-purchase cattle, again enter the
country, and find his waggons probably pillaged and burnt he knows not
by whom, his followers murdered, and he left to make the best of his way
home again. Thus a hunter's life is one of excitement and risk; and
though the profits are great at times, and the life one which has
irresistible charms, yet it is one not to be rashly undertaken by all
men. There are, too, very many small chiefs, whose friendship it is
necessary to gain by presents, or they will not allow you to journey
through their country; and sometimes small wars take place between these
potentates, when each party considers himself entitled to pillage all
travellers who have been on friendly terms with his enemy.
There are, then, a goodly array of dangers and difficulties surrounding
the African hunter, to say nothing of those which threaten him from wild
beasts, such as lions, leopards, etc., or poisonous snakes. So that it
is not difficult for a man as young even as Hans Sterk to gain a wide
reputation for skill and bravery in surmounting those obstacles to which
he had been frequently opposed.
The teeth of the various elephants slain by Hans having been extracted
from the jaws of the animals, placed on the shoulders of Kaffirs, marked
with Hans' mark, and despatched to the waggons, Hans led the way over
some bushy country towards a range of low hills near which a bright
silvery streak indicated that a stream of water was flowing.
"Before I look for spoor where I expect it," said Hans to his Dutch
companions, "I will look through my `far-seer'" (as he termed his
telescope), "to see what wilde there is in the open country."
Adjusting his telescope to suit his focus, Hans took a careful look all
round, and at length rested his glass against a tree and looked steadily
down near the stream of which we have spoken. After a careful
examination he offered his glass to a companion, and said, "I see eight
or nine large bull elephants near the mimosas beside those yellow-wood
trees. Can you see more?"