ELEPHANT HUNTING, ETC. 207
little sentiment, as is shown in the following words of Doctor Rainsford:*
"I
should not greatly care to kill any more elephants. They are too big,
too old, and too wise to be classed as mere game. As I stood by the
side of that vast fallen bulk I realized I had extinguished a life
perhaps three times as old as my own. What had not that great beast
seen and survived? What comings and goings of the tribes? What changes
among the petty bands of men? It was probably a full-grown elephant
when Livingstone first resolutely set his face toward Africa's unknown
interior. I felt small and a little guilty."
In
the National Museum at Washington are the three large elephants shot by
Colonel Roosevelt in Equatorial Africa in 1909. The tallest of these
was a rogue bull, shot in Uganda, and measuring 10 ft. 9 in. in height
at the withers. A more bulky though somewhat shorter example of a bull
elephant had a height of 10 ft. 6 in., with tusks weighing 65 pounds
each; this was the first elephant to fall before the redoubtable
Colonel's rifle, and was shot on the slopes of Mount Kenia. The third
of these Roosevelt bull elephants, shot somewhat later near Meru, had
attained a height of 10 ft. 4 in. To these may be added a cow elephant
which fell before the rifle of Paul J. Rainey, near Mount Marsabit, on
the same expedition. The right tusk of this animal measured 5 ft. 7 in.
in length and the left tusk 5 ft. 10 in., each having a diameter of 10
in.; the heavier one weighs 28 pounds.f
Although
in many parts of Africa the wholesale slaughter of elephants has
greatly reduced their numbers, they are still fairly plentiful in the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, especially
*Ibid., p. 11782.
tCommunicated by Dr. R. Ratbbun, Director U. S. National Museum, Washington. D.C.
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