It Requires A Very Good Rifle To Kill An African Elephant.

A No. 8 bore with a Frazer's shell, planted in the temple, I believe, would drop an elephant each shot.

Faulkner makes some extraordinary statements, about walking up in front of an elephant and planting a bullet in his forehead, killing him instantly. The tale, however, is so incredible that I would prefer not to believe it; especially when he states that the imprint of the muzzle of his rifle was on the elephant's trunk. African travellers - especially those with a taste for the chase - are too fond of relating that which borders on the incredible for ordinary men to believe them. Such stories must be taken with a large grain of salt, for the sake of the amusement they afford to readers at home. In future, whenever I hear a man state how he broke the back of an antelope at 600 yards, I shall incline to believe a cipher had been added by a slip of the pen, or attribute it to a typographical error, for this is almost an impossible feat in an African forest. It may be done once, but it could never be done twice running. An antelope makes a very small target at 600 yards distance; but, then, all these stories belong by right divine to the chasseur who travels to Africa for the sake only of sport.

On the 13th we continued our march across several ridges; and the series of ascents and descents revealed to us valleys and mountains never before explored streams; rushing northward, swollen by the rains, and grand primeval forests, in whose twilight shade no white man ever walked before.

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