One Man Mounts A White
Pony, And Galloping Before The Elephant, Induces Him, As He Readily Does,
--Firearms Being Unknown,
--To charge and "chivy." The rider directs his
course along, and close to, some bush, where a comrade is concealed;
And
the latter, as the animal passes at speed, cuts the back sinew of the hind
leg, where in the human subject the tendon Achilles would be, with a
sharp, broad and heavy knife. [31] This wound at first occasions little
inconvenience: presently the elephant, fancying, it is supposed, that a
thorn has stuck in his foot, stamps violently, and rubs the scratch till
the sinew is fairly divided. The animal, thus disabled, is left to perish
wretchedly of hunger and thirst: the tail, as amongst the Kafirs, is cut
off to serve as trophy, and the ivories are removed when loosened by
decomposition. In this part of Africa the elephant is never tamed. [32]
For six hours we rode the breadth of the Harawwah Valley: it was covered
with wild vegetation, and surface-drains, that carry off the surplus of
the hills enclosing it. In some places the torrent beds had cut twenty
feet into the soil. The banks were fringed with milk-bush and Asclepias,
the Armo-creeper, a variety of thorns, and especially the yellow-berried
Jujube: here numberless birds followed bright-winged butterflies, and the
"Shaykhs of the Blind," as the people call the black fly, settled in
swarms upon our hands and faces as we rode by.
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