Note 4 — Chapter XII · TAMING AND TRAINING ELEPHANTS—CAPTURE AND TREATMENT—ELEPHANTS AS LABORERS AND AS CIRCUS PERFORMERS.

We could never experience any other feelings than disgust at the cruelty, and pity for the animals, at reading the sickening details with which, with a slaughter-house gusto, certain heroes have graced the narratives of their exploits. Gordon Cummings gives an account of his pursuit of a wounded elephant which he had lamed by lodging a ball in its shoulder blade. It limped slowly toward a tree, against which it leaned itself in helpless agony, whilst its pursuer seated himself in front of it, in safety, to boil his coffee, and observe its sufferings. The story is continued as follows: “Having admired him for a considerable time, I resolved to make experiments on vulnerable points; and approaching very near I fired several bullets at different parts of his enormous skull. He only acknowledged the shots by a salaam-like movement of his trunk, with the point of which he gently touched the wounds with a striking and peculiar action. Surprised and shocked at finding that I was only prolonging the sufferings of the noble beast, which bore its trials with such dignified composure, I resolved to finish the proceeding with all possible despatch, and accordingly opened fire upon him from the left side, aiming at the shoulder. I first fired six shots with the two-grooved rifle, which must have eventually proved mortal. After which I fired six shots at the same part with the Dutch six-pounder. Large tears now trickled from his eyes, which he slowly shut and opened, his colossal frame shivered convulsively, and falling on his side, he expired.”

In another place, after detailing the manner in which he assailed a poor animal, he says: “I was loading and firing as fast as could be, sometimes at the head, sometimes behind the shoulder, until my elephant’s forequarter was a mass of gore: notwithstanding which he continued to hold on, leaving the grass and branches of the forest scarlet in his wake. * * * * * Having fired thirty-five rounds with my two-grooved rifle, I opened upon him with the Dutch six-pounder, and when forty bullets perforated his hide, he began for the first time to evince signs of a dilapidated constitution.” The disgusting description is closed thus: “Throughout the charge he repeatedly cooled his person with large quantities of water, which he ejected from his trunk over his sides and back, and just as the pangs of death came over him, he stood trembling violently beside a thorn tree, and kept pouring water into his bloody mouth until he died, when he pitched heavily forward with the whole weight of his fore-quarters resting on the points of his tusks. The strain was fair, and the tusks did not yield; but the portion of his head in which the tusks were imbedded, extending a long way above the eye, yielded and burst with a muffled crash.”

“Sport” is noble, but a butcher is not necessarily a sportsman, and a useless destruction of life, where no more danger is incurred than in a butcher’s shambles, is not an absolute proof of courage or heroism, and the “noble hunters” have not the butcher’s excuse for the bloodshed. Whatever of heroism there is in these encounters, we cannot help thinking, is displayed by the elephants, and not by their aggressors. For a hunter to put such achievements as we have just quoted on record merely displays the egotism and cruelty of the man.