“Come into my tent to-night, Karls, and eat there; we will then talk over our day’s sport. What have you done, Hans?”
Hans briefly related the results of his day’s work, and described the size of the tusks which his elephants carried.
“You have done better than we have,” said Hofman, “for we have only shot seven amongst us, and two are not full-grown bulls.”
As might be expected, the conversation during the evening was mostly about elephants and elephant hunting; and as we may learn much about the habits of this singular animal, and the method of hunting it adopted by the Africans, we will relate some of the anecdotes connected therewith.
“You ask me where I shot my first elephant,” said Hofman. “It was where few men now hunt elephants, because there are not many there now, and because it is a dangerous place to hunt them in. It was in the Fish-river bush in the old colony. That bush, as you know, is very thick and thorny, and if they would only lie close, and didn’t leave a footmark, a hundred elephants might live there peaceably for years even now; but when I was quite a boy there were not many men could say they had walked ten miles in the Fish-river bush. My father used to go down to Graham’s Town about twice a year to get various things he wanted, and when he went he generally took me. I was little more than fifteen when he went down on the occasion I will tell you of.
“We had to pass the Fish-river bush on the way from our place down to Graham’s Town, and as we were going along I saw near the road,—or rather waggon-track, for it was nothing more,—a broken tree. I turned into the bush to look, and then saw what I knew was the spoor of an elephant. I didn’t say what I had seen, for all of a sudden I got very ambitious, and I thought I would make myself a name, and not be thought a boy any longer. I knew that we outspanned about half a mile further on, and as the day was very hot, I asked my father if he would go on after a short outspan, or wait a bit.
“‘I’ll wait till near sundown,’ he replied, ‘for it is full moon to-night, and we can trek better in the night than in this heat, and we can sleep a little now.’
“‘I’d rather go and shoot,’ said I, ‘if you’d lend me your big gun.’
“‘What do you want the big gun for?’ inquired my father. ‘That is for elephants or rhinoster, and you will find nothing bigger than a buck.’
“‘I can always shoot better with that big gun,’ I replied.