Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/208

 bushes he had thrust his trunk too close to a poisonous tree snake and had been stung; that he had beaten the snake on to the ground with his trunk and stamped it to death. In the bronze I pictured the snake alive on the ground and the elephant in the act of trampling it to death.

In addition to these elephant bronzes I have done one other bronze of a combat between a lion and a buffalo, and I have two other elephant subjects started in clay. I have never seen a lion and a buffalo fight nor do I know of any one else who has. But I know at least two authentic records of the dead bodies of a lion and a buffalo together—mute evidence of a fight to a finish and death to both. And I have seen dead buffalo carcasses from which one could tell pretty well how the lion had killed his prey. The lion tries to throw the buffalo in much the same manner as a cowboy "bulldogs" a steer—that is, he throws him by jerking the buffalo's head down. In the bronze I have represented the lion as having "bulldogged" the buffalo by catching his nose with a front paw and bending his head to the ground in his effort to throw him. The buffalo has saved himself from a fall by bracing himself with one front foot and the scene is set for a battle royal unless the lion bolts.

One of the bronzes that will soon be published records a scene that will always be a pleasant memory to me. I was watching an elephant herd on the march through an open grass country. The elders moved along sedately enough, but at one side of the herd