The White Chief of the Caffres - Drayson Alfred Wilks

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for the arrival of the elephants, quantities of dead wood were gathered in heaps in readiness for large fires to be made when the animals approached our gardens. Several pits were also dug and covered with a hurdle, on the top of which earth was thrown and grass carefully laid. These pits were placed in the old paths of the elephants, because it was known that these animals always followed in their old tracks whenever they revisited a country, and though these tracks were overgrown, or obliterated, yet the instinct, or knowledge of locality of the elephants was so great, that they would travel miles through the bush, and then come out into the open at exactly the same place at which they had come out of the bush some thirty or forty moons previously.

      The Caffres told me that the elephants did not understand any man getting up into a tree; that if they were chased by an elephant they climbed a tree, and, although this tree was not big enough to place them beyond reach of an elephant, yet the animal never seemed to think of pulling the man out of it, or of pulling down the tree. This information was of great value to me in carrying out a plan that I was forming in my head.

      It was about half a moon’s time after we first heard that elephants were coming our way, that we discovered their traces within five miles of our village. There was a marsh about five miles from us, formed by the overflow of one of the rivers, and in this marsh the elephants had rolled in the mud, and had then returned to the bush. In this bush there were several large trees, hung over by creeping plants and very easily climbed. Having followed the track of the elephants into the bush for a short distance, I noticed a tree that was covered with mud about the stem, and as high as I could reach with my assagy. This was caused by the elephants rubbing themselves against the tree after they had rolled in the mud.

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