There now remained but two elephants of those that had been discovered, which were a she one with a calf. The Agageer would willingly have let these alone, as the teeth of the female are very small, and the young one is of no sort of value, even for food, its flesh shrinking much upon drying. But the hunters would not be limited in their sport. The people having observed the place of her retreat, thither we eagerly followed. She was very soon found, and as soon lamed by the Agageers; but when they came to wound her with the darts, as every one did in their turn, to our very great surprise, the young one, which had been suffered to escape unheeded and unpursued, came out from the thicket apparently in great anger, running upon the horses and men with all the violence it was master of. I was amazed; and as much as ever I was, upon such an occasion, afflicted, at seeing the great affection of the little animal defending its wounded mother, heedless of its own life or safety. I therefore cried to them, for God's sake to spare the mother, tho' it was then too late; and the calf had made several rude attacks upon me, which I avoided without difficulty; but I am happy, to this day, in the reflection that I did not strike it. At last, making one of its attacks upon Ayto Engedan, it hurt him a little on the leg; upon which he thrust it through with his lance, as others did after, and it then fell dead before its wounded mother, whom it had so affectionately defended. It was about the size of an ass, but round, big-bellied, and heavily made; and was so furious, and unruly, that it would easily have broken the leg either of man or horse, could it have overtaken them, and jostled against them properly.
Here is an example of a beast (a young one too) possessing abstracted sentiments to a very high degree. By its flight on the first appearance of the hunters, it is plain it apprehended danger to itself, it also reflected upon that of its mother, which was the cause of its return to her assistance. This affection or duty, or let us call it any thing we please, except instinct, was stronger than the fear of danger; and it must have conquered that fear by reflection before it returned, when it resolved to make its best and last efforts, for it never attempted to fly afterwards. I freely forgive that part of my readers, who know me and themselves so little, as to think I believe it worth my while to play the mountebank, for the great honour of diverting them; an honour far from being of the first rate in my esteem. If they should shew, in this place, a degree of doubt, that, for once, I am making use of the privilege of travellers, and dealing a little in the marvellous, it would be much more to the credit of their discernment, than their prodigious scruples about the reality or possibility of eating raw flesh; a thing that has been recorded by the united testimony of all that ever visited Abyssinia for these two hundred years, has nothing unreasonable in itself, though contrary to our practice in other cases; and can only be called in question now, through weakness, ignorance, or an intemperate desire to find fault, by those that believed that a man could get into a quart bottle.
What I relate of the young elephant contains difficulties of another kind; though I am very well persuaded some will swallow it easily, who cannot digest the raw flesh. In both instances I adhere strictly to the truth; and I beg leave to assure those scrupulous readers, that if they knew their author, they would think that his having invented a lie, solely for the pleasure of diverting them, was much more improbable than either of the two foregoing facts. He places his merit in having accomplished these travels in general, not in being present at any one incident during the course of them; the believing of which can reflect no particular honour upon himself, nor the disbelieving it any sort of disgrace in the minds of liberal and unprejudiced men. It is for these only he would wish to write, and these are the only persons who can profit from his narrative.
The Agageers having procured as much meat as would maintain them a long time, could not be persuaded to continue the hunting any longer. Part of them remained with the she-elephant, which seemed to be the fattest; tho' the one they killed first was by much the most valuable, on account of its long teeth. It was still alive, nor did it seem an easy operation to kill it, without the assistance of our Agageers, even though it was totally helpless, except with its trunk.
We sought about for the buffaloes and rhinoceroses; but though there was plenty of both in the neighbourhood, we could not find them; our noise and shooting in the morning having probably scared them away. One rhinoceros only was seen by a servant. We returned in the evening to a great fire, and lay all night under the shade of trees. Here we saw them separate the great teeth of the elephant from the head, by roasting the jaw-bones on the fire, till the lower, thin, and hollow part of the teeth were nearly consumed; and then they come out easily, the thin part being of no value.
The next morning we were on horseback by the dawn of day in search of the rhinoceros, many of which we had heard make a very deep groan and cry as the morning approached; several of the Agageers then joined us, and after we had searched about an hour in the very thickest part of the wood, one of them rushed out with great violence, crossing the plain towards a wood of canes that was about two miles distance. But though he ran, or rather trotted, with surprising speed, considering his bulk, he was, in a very little time, transfixed with thirty or forty javelins; which so confounded him, that he left his purpose of going to the wood, and ran into a deep hole, ditch, or ravine, a cul de sac, without outlet, breaking above a dozen of the javelins as he entered. Here we thought he was caught as in a trap, for he had scarce room to turn; when a servant, who had a gun, standing directly over him, fired at his head, and the animal fell immediately, to all appearance dead. All those on foot now jumped in with their knives to cut him up, and they had scarce begun, when the animal recovered so far as to rise upon his knees; happy then was the man that escaped first; and had not one of the Agageers, who was himself engaged in the ravine, cut the sinew of the hind-leg as he was retreating, there would have been a very sorrowful account of the foot-hunters that day.
After having dispatched him, I was curious to see what wound the shot had given, which had operated so violently upon so huge an animal; and I doubted not it was in the brain. But it had struck him nowhere but upon the point of the foremost horn, of which it had carried off above an inch; and this occasioned a concussion that had stunned him for a minute, till the bleeding had recovered him. I preserved the horn from curiosity, and have it now by me[18]. I saw evidently the ball had touched no other part of the beast.
While we were busy with the rhinoceros, Ammonios joined us. A message from the king had carried away Azage Kyrillos the secretary. Two other messengers had arrived from the queen, one to Ayto Confu, and another to Ozoro Esther; and it was Ozoro Esther's commands to her son, to leave the hunting and return. There was no remedy but to obey; Ammonios, however, wanted to have his part of the hunting; and the country people told us, that multitudes of buffaloes were to be found a little to the westward, where there were large trees and standing pools of water. We agreed then to hunt homeward, without being over-solicitous about returning early.
We had not gone far before a wild boar arose between me and Ayto Engedan, which I immediately killed with my javelin. Before he, on his horse, came up to it, another of its companions shared the same fate about a quarter of an hour after. This was the sport I had been many years used to in Barbary, and was infinitely more dextrous at it than any of the present company; this put me more upon a par with my companions, who had not failed to laugh at me, upon my horse's refusal to carry me near either to the elephant or rhinoceros. Nobody would touch the carcase of the boar after it was dead, being an animal which is considered as unclean.