do not trouble even to shoot for the pot or to get the meat that is the
ration provided for their native labourers, but employs a native, armed
with a rifle and a few cartridges, to shoot antelope for meat.

To one in whom the spirit of adventure and romance is not dead what more
attractive than an elephant hunter's life? To work for six months and
make two or three thousand pounds, and spend the proceeds in a riotous
holiday, until the heavy tropic rains are over and the bush is dry
again. But few realise the rare qualities that an elephant hunter must
have. He must be extraordinarily tough, quite hardened to the toil and
diseases of the country, knowing many native tongues, largely immune
from the fever that lays a white man low many marches from civilisation
and hospitals, of an endurance splendid, with hope to dare the risk, and
courage to endure the toil. For the professional elephant hunter is now,
by force of circumstance and white man's law, become a wolf of the
forest, and the hands of all Governments are against him. He must mark
his elephant down, be up with the first light and after him, must
manoeuvre for light and wind and scent to pick the big bull from the
sheltering herd of females. If the head shot is not possible, the lung
shot or stomach shot alone is left. And six hours' march through
waterless country before one comes up with the elephant resting with his
herd is not the best preparation for a shot. If one misses, one may as
well go home another eight hours back to water. But if you hit and
follow the bull through the thorny bush, you do not even then know
whether you will find the victim. If, however, you find traces three
times in the first hour, or see the blood pouring from the trunk--not
merely blown in spray upon the bushes--then the certain conviction comes
that within an hour you will find your kill. Then the long march back to
camp, all food and water and the precious tusks carried by natives,
often too exhausted at the end to eat. A man who cannot march thirty