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6 remains incapable of advancing a step, till the horseman's return, or his companions coming up pierce him through with javelins and lances: he then falls to the ground, and expires with loss of blood.

The agageer nearest me presently lamed his elephant, and left him standing. Ayto Engedan, Ayto Confu, Guebra Mariam, and several others, fixed their spears in the other before the agageer had cut his tendons. My agageer, however, having wounded the first elephant, failed in the pursuit of the second; and being close upon him at the entrance of the wood, he received a violent blow from the branch of a tree which the elephant had bent by his weight, and, after passing, allowed it to replace itself; when it knocked down both the riders, and very much hurt the horse. This, indeed, is the great danger in elephant-hunting; for some of the trees, that are dry and short, break by the violent pressure of so immense a body moving so rapidly, and fall upon the pursuers, or across the roads. But the greatest number of these trees being of a succulent quality, they bend without breaking, and return quickly to the former position, when they strike both horse and man so violently, that they often beat them to pieces. Dexterous too as the riders are, the elephant sometimes reaches them with his trunk, with which he dashes the horse against the ground, and then sets his feet upon him, till he tears him limb from limb with his proboscis; a great many hunters die this way. Besides this, the soil at this time of the year is split into deep chasms, or cavities, by the heat of the sun, so that nothing can be more dangerous than the riding.