Speaking of the species on both continents, we may consider them as but little entitled to much of their reputation for harmlessness. Sir Samuel Baker (“The Rifle and Hound in Ceylon”) gives it as his opinion that they are “the most dangerous creatures with which a sportsman can contend;” and W. T. Hornaday (“Two Years in the Jungle”) takes the same view.
An elephant never exhibits the blind and senseless ferocity of a black rhinoceros. He is often fully as fierce, and far more destructive, but this disposition does not display itself in the same way. Both of these animals will, however, attack by scent alone. It is not meant that in elephants this conduct is customary; all that is intended is to substantiate the occurrence of such an act.
This animal’s character is more completely evinced in the expression “My Lord the Elephant” than it could be by any description, however true and striking. Sanderson explains that the title is not given in reverence so much as in fear. The native attendants upon elephants, he observes, have little respect for their intelligence, but a lasting apprehension of what may at any time happen to themselves.
It is generally said that while male elephants are free they never become “must,” and, therefore, that this temporary delirium arising from interference with natural functions, cannot be the cause of those extreme cases of viciousness which occasionally make a tusker the scourge of a whole district. Whether “must” or not, these brutes are sometimes mad, and among other examples that might be given, Sir Samuel Baker’s description of a “tank-rogue,”—shot by himself in Ceylon,—portrays too faithfully the familiar symptoms of mania to leave any doubt about the animal’s condition.
This fierce beast had committed many murders,—killing people without any provocation; lying in wait for them; stealing towards those places he knew to be frequented; and apparently devoting all his energies to the destruction of human life. From the first moment at which he was seen all his actions betokened insanity. Baker never suspected the true state of the case, but he watched this elephant for some time, and carefully noted his conduct,—his wild and disordered mien, his aimless restlessness, and causeless anger; all the features which form the characteristic physiognomy of mania.
Extremely dangerous elephants are not, however, always insane. There is no need to argue mental alienation in order to account for acts which vice of itself is fully competent to explain. The beast’s strength is enormous, its bulk greatest among land animals, its offensive weapons and general capability of doing harm are unequalled. Of these facts the creature itself must be conscious, and it never exhibits the darker side of its character without showing that it is so.
This leads to a question that has been considerably disputed, and concerning which many opinions have been recorded—all dogmatic, and most of them contradictory. Suppose that a homicidal elephant catches a fugitive whom he pursues, how does he kill him, and is he invariably destroyed? The subject stated does not amount to much in itself, but some points will appear in the course of a brief inquiry into it that merit attention. All writers who held to the instinctive hypothesis, and imagined that brutes only acted in a predetermined way, have taken exclusive views of this matter. When a man is overtaken by an elephant many say he is always killed. Sanderson, for example, says so. Captain Wedderburn was killed. Professor Wahlberg was killed. Everybody is killed; it cannot be otherwise. Nevertheless, Colonel Walter Campbell (“The Old Forest Ranger”) saw a companion emerge from beneath the feet of a rogue elephant, and Major Leveson and Major Blayney Walshe (“Sporting and Military Adventures in Nepaul”) relate the incidents of like cases. Henry Courtney Selous (“A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa”) lived to tell how this same good fortune attended himself; and Lieutenant Moodie was actually trampled in the presence of several witnesses, and yet, although considerably injured, escaped with his life.
These were, of course, very unusual instances, and it is undeniable that most people whom elephants catch are killed. But how? Pressed to death with one of the animal’s forefeet, one authority declares; with both of them, another insists; kicked forwards and backwards between the hind and front legs till reduced to a pulp, maintains a third; transfixed with the tusks, kneeled upon, walked over, dismembered, others protest, as if any mode of putting a man to death, except that particular one which they had determined to be the natural, usual, and, so to speak, proper method, would be a singular departure from the course an elephant might have been expected to pursue.
Sir Emmerson Tennant (“Ceylon”), who has made as many mistakes about these animals as can anywhere be found gathered together in one place, is certain the tusks are never used offensively. He, in fact, shows that it is physically impossible that they should be. According to him these appendages are probably auxiliary to the animal’s food supply, but for the most part useless. Nobody, however, ever saw a pair of these developed front teeth that were symmetrical; one is invariably more worn away than the other on account of its having been used by preference in digging up roots, bulbs, etc. With respect to their employment as weapons, Selous states that “when an elephant overtakes his persecutor The effect upon these species of those general influences which are exerted by social life may be inferred from the existence of their coherent family groups, from the protracted period during which maternal guardianship is continued, and the baneful results that solitude brings about. Still there seems to be little doubt that Green, Moodie, and Pollok represent the best opinion in saying that sympathy is less active in elephants than it is in many animals whose moral qualities have usually been considered as greatly inferior to theirs. “I have never known an instance,” remarks Sanderson, “of a tusker undertaking to cover the retreat of a herd.”