Most people are acquainted with only the Indian elephant, the kind commonly seen in captivity, and judge from him that the elephant is a sort of semi-domesticated beast of burden, like the camel and the ox.

Yet the Indian elephant is about as much like his African brother as a tomcat is like a tiger.
[Photograph: The Hyenas Had Feasted Well] [Photograph: By courtesy of W.D.Boyce.

Great Stretches of Dense Forest] [Drawing: _Being Killed by an Elephant Is a Very Mussy Death_] Many African hunters consider elephant hunting more dangerous than lion, rhino, or buffalo hunting, any one of which can hardly be called an indoor sport.

These are the four animals that are classed as "royal game" in game law parlance, and each one when aroused is sufficiently diverting to dispel any lassitude produced by the climate.

It is wakeful sport--hunting these four kinds of game--and in my experience elephant hunting is the "most wakefullest" of them all.
In my several months of African hunting I had four different encounters with elephants.