and
the lighter 137-1/2 lbs., making 289-1/2 lbs. for the pair. A queer
incident immediately succeeded the fall of this ponderous animal. The
hunter had been in pursuit of three elephants, and one of them turned
back quickly on seeing his companion fall, rushed toward him and gave
him a violent thrust, wounding him and injuring the body very
seriously, one of the tusks deeply penetrating the abdomen. Whether
this was done in anger or to induce the fallen animal to get up and
continue its flight is uncertain, but seeing that these energetic
measures were ineffectual, the still unharmed elephant quickly resumed
its mad career.*
A
fine pair of tusks belongs to Lieut. Alexander H. Wheeler, having been
secured from an elephant he shot at Mohoroni, British East Africa. One
of the tusks measured 7 ft. | in. in length and weighed 81 lbs., the
other one being exactly 7 ft. long and weighing 79 lbs.; in each case
the circumference is 18-1/4 in. Lieut. Wheeler is at the front in the
Dardanelles with the British expeditionary force as this book goes to
press, and with the French Army is another noted elephant hunter, Mr.
W. Sewall. The latter has hunted over the greater part of equatorial
Africa since 1905, with his headquarters in British East Africa. In all
he has shot between 30 and 40 elephants. The Harvard Club in New York
City has as a trophy the head of one of the elephants brought down by
Mr. Sewall, the slender, gracefully curved tusks being of singular
beauty, although they weigh not more than 80 lbs apiece. The best pair
secured by this hunter weighed 124 lbs. and 129 lbs. respectively, a
joint weight of 253 lbs. They were the spoils of an elephant shot in
the Belgian Congo. Mr. Gerrit Forbes, of Boston, can claim an even
larger elephant bag, for he has killed 48 elephants in the years
between 1907
*James Sutherland, "The Adventures of an Elephant Hunter," London, 1912, p. 104.
