Evening Star Newspaper, July 10, 1897, Page 18

i> THE EVENING STAR. SATURDAY, JULY 10, 1897-24 PAGES. UNTING ELEPHANTS A Sport That Involves More Work Than Play. SPENDING LONG DAYS ON THE TRAIL Graphic Account of Experiences in : South Africa. MANY NARROW ESCAPES pein (Copyright, 1897, by F. ©. Selous.) Written for The Evening Star. HREE THINGS have saved the wild, unprotected clephant in southern Africa from extinction. ‘These are the extra- ordinary — devclop- ment of its sense of smell, its power of walking © enormous distances without 4 y rest, and the vast EE extent of the tia country over which FE it can travel after having been disturbed. I can illustrate all Yaree points. Many years ago, in 1872, I ‘was hunting elephants in company with fm experienced Hottentot hunter in the for- est country to the north of Matabeleland. e day we were cscending a small iso- Yated hill in order to get a view over the surrounding country, when my companion eepied a herd of elephants and at once di- ected my attention to them. They were fadvancing rapidly through the forest in h long, straggling line, and were heading $n a direction that would take them across the line of march by which we had come to the hill. As socn as the old hunter at sy side realized this fact, which he did ‘at a glance, he said to me, “We must de- scend the hill at once, and cut off the ele- phants before they read our spoor, or they will assuredly scent it and take alarm.” We, therefore, scrambled down the hill @nd ran back thrcugh the open forest as F. C. SELOUS KILLING Masarwa bushman. The former were. Mats- bele and Mashunas, and very much like ary other ordinary specimens of their race, but the latter was one of the most snga- cious hunters I have ever met even men of his owa wild race, and altho considerably pest the prime of life he was simply unsurpassable as a tracker and runner. It was, I should say, about 5:30 a.m. when old Marman, the bushman, took up the spoor and we stuck to it at @ very = TSses | A CURIOUS-MOUNTAIN Blocks of @rhnit Piled Up to Heighit of 2,000 Fost, fast walk till about 3 p.m., only twice tak- STU PENIS 1 Ing the seddies ‘oft the horses fora few THE BLACK TREVERONS OF AUSTRALIA minutes at a time to ease their backs and ae allow them to stale. his = | By this time all the Kaffirs were very | lou much fagged, as the heat of the sun had been intense fcr the last five hours, and when we saddled up our horses for the third time and old Marman announced his intention of running on the spoor, we told them to take a rest and follow quietly on the tracks of our horses. Old Marman now commenced to run, and in all my Hife I have never seen a more marvelous feat of endurance. He would run a mile at a good sharp trot, then walk very fast for a quar- ter or half a mile, then run again, and so he kept on for mile after mile and hour after hour. At length the burning sun sank from view, but still the elephants were far ahead of us, and still old Marman trotted doggedly on their tracks, Soon after this time we came to where the elephants had rested during the fiercest heat of the day, possibly from 2 till 4, and as on again moving they had scattered and commenced to feed in real earnest, break- ing down trees and digging up roots in all Cirections, we might yet have come up with them had we been in a part of the world where the twilight is long drawn out. But within the tropics some 20 degrees south of the equator, once the sun has set, night comes on apace. Ran Twenty Miles. During the thirteen hours we had heen on the elephant’s tracks, I think we could not have covered less than fifty miles, as old Marman must have run nearly if not quite twenty after 3 o'clock, and allowing ever an hour for the time lost while the horses were offsaddled, we had then already done about eight hours’ very fast walking since But One Man Has Ever Been: Able to Reach the Summit. 3 B | i NATIVES SHUN THE PLACE Writtem for The Evening Star. JUMBLED MASS of granite blocks, some of them 50 feet square, all of them carrying sharp edges and flat surfaces, as though done by the hand of some Titan stone worker, and piled helter-skelter in a huge heap 2,000 feet high and four miles thick at the base. Granite blocks TW tes of every conceivable shape and size, and between them, as they zest unevenly upon one another, dark caverns and passageways; chambers as large as those of Luray or Mammoth cave. Not a bush, not a tree in sight, not even the trace of an animal to lend at least the semblance of life. This, in a few words, is the Black Trevetons of Australia, by all odds the strangest, most unexplainable mountains in the world. This wonderful pile of granite is situ- ated twenty miles back of the coast range of mountains that fringes the edge of Cape Yerk peninsula. The visitor to Cooktown forward or to the side. Often I retraced my slow, creeping course to find an egress, using the chalk to chart the course to pre- vent being lost. Once I spent fully two heurs scaling a 50-foot rise in this way. Sores and brutses did not count. Putting your provisions through and then working yourself through the gap of some irregular niche of sharp rocks is far from pleasant, but it must be done if one aspires to top the Black Trevetons. Inside of the Mountain. Working by compass, after passing the first tier, I found myself worming further ard further into the middle of the great hill. The sun could not be seen; my watch was left behind for safety; the fading light soon told the appreach of evening. While streaks of light still bent themselves about like silver ribbons during the day, they were now getting paler and leadened. The sun may have been shining outside, but it had now lost its angle upon the caves about me. How far I was in the mountain I do not know. I had worked and pulled and crawled through hole after hole, and ‘plored cavity after cavity, following the brightest light for hours, until my knees ‘were raw and my garments torn in the ef- fort. As the dense curtain of night pulled itself down before me, the air puffed about my ears like the spirit wings of invisible ghosts. I was tired and worn out. When my own hand could not be seen against my own nuse, I lay down to rest—a human Parcel in a mass of stone. In that terrible mb up and down and about beneath the surface, not able to see further than the immediate rock opposite the hole through which streamed the gray streak which guided me, the mysteries of the pile re- MOST NORTHERLY HOTEL IN THE WORLD. UP TOWARD THE POLE selves are those which have been asso- ciated with the various arctic expeditions. Its Latit al Position. Thus the hotel and post office occupy nearly the same latitudinal position as where, on the west coast of Greenland, Kane lost the Advance in Rensselaer har- bor; or where, at Cape Sabine, the wreck of the Greely expedition was saved from @ fate which had already overtaken sev- eral membe's of the party; “Redcliffe the winter home of the Peary expedition of *91-92, was situated on approximately lati- tude 77 degrees 43 minutes, and Anni- versary Lodge, on Bowdoin bay, on very nearly the same lines, and therefore some forty miles south of the hotel and pest office of Advent bay, Spitzbergen. It is difficult to realize that an appointed hotel should exist at a point the latitudinal po- sition of which is removed only 5) miles from the farthest point reached by Nan- sen during his late remarkable arctic ven- ture. Spitzbergen, like the north of Green- land, still remains a “No Man’s Land.” But it is expected that before long it will become a possessicn of Norway. The hotel itself is not very pretentious so far as looks are concerned. It is but one and a half stories high, and has a diminutive porch at the front. It is built of wood, that deing the only su! as well as the warmest to be obtain the arctic regions. Its timbers are heavy, as they must indeed be to withstand the blinding storms of the winter season. In- How to Kill an Elephant. The best shot under such circumstances 1s right through the trunk into the chest, a8 & powerful or smocth-bore gun will drive a bullet right through an elephant's trunk and then reach his heart. I have Killed several in this way, and have hit many others in the head, trunk or chest on the side of the trunk when they were charging, but without exception every one as soon as he was struck immediately stop- ped screaming, and swerved off to one side. Once I remember I was charged by an ele- phant bull which I had wounded with a 450-bore Metford rifle by Gibbs of Bristol. As he came on I wondered whether the small bore bullet would stop him, as tt would have been all up with me had it.not done so. He was screaming loudly, but first taking up the spoor in the early morn- | in-mediately the little bullet struck him in. ing. The elephants had had twenty-four |the chest he swerved off and became hours in which to accomplish this distance, | silent, and I killed him with another shot. but as they apparently had no particular} Elephant hunting on horseback is very cause for so long a journey, and were more-} much plessanter, and infinitely less fa- over accompanied by a very young calf, ft | tiguing, than the same pursuit on foot, and, would appear as if this were only their nor- | given a thoroughly trained horse and fairly aaa Fate of travel during’ the twenty-four | oven ey BG pees CUT Bet | wuld never suspect thelr presence. The When it became so dark that we could | cennot always have things éne’s own way, | ™@ariner far out on the ocean cannot see no longer follow thefr tracks we decided | and, as a matter of fact, when you do ‘ to pass the night at the nearest stream, }C¢me up with the elephants, your horse had then take up the spoor again in the | Will usually-be pretty tired, and your gamo Horning, As our horses had had no food | Will be encountered very probably in the re ait during the day, we hobbled them | dense, thorny jungle, through which a at i inaned them loose, having first col- | Charging elephant can crash in’ almost lected a large quanilty of dry wood and | Straight line, while a horse has to pick his Kindled two large fires, one on each side | W4Y among the trees and bushes. Under A Sommer Hotel That Lies Within the Arc- tic Circle. Five Hundred Miles North of Hammer- fest—Comfortable, if Not Prete: Written for Tbe Evening Star. The most northern hotel In the world and probably the coslest resort to be found anywhere during the summer months, is situated on the inhospitable and ice-bound shore of Advent bay, where it washes the west coast of Spitzbergen. It is an odd- looking northwestern edifice, called in the vernacular, “Turist Hythen"—that is, Tour- ist Hotel. It has been opened for its first season this year, a season necessarily short in the arctic regions, extending from July 10 to August 18. Its accommodations include thirty beds, and it is now announc- ed that the great increase of tourist travel to the gate of the arctic regions has made the establishment of a post office in the side, it is roomy and generally contains such circumstances a horse which, in open ground and when fairly fresh, could give an elephant forty yards out of 100, and then beat him, may very easily be caught by hia bulky pursuer, and many cases have come within my own knowledge where horses and their riders have been overtaken by elephants, sometimes with fatal results. 1 Tmyself once had a marvelous escape, as mained mysterious still. The little rays shot on down or out, the rock still jumbled and yawned and yawned, and at times one hardly knew whether he was going up or descending. The beams of the sun didn’t Seem to come from anywhere in particular: they just bent and shot and_ hoisted through the pile as best they could. At no time did I double on my course, except when forced to retrace my chalked track, because of failure to find an opening big enough to admit the body of a 180-pound hotel a necessary feature. The hotel is situated in an approximate latitude of 75 degrees fifteen minutes N. Persons who have made the cruise of the Norwegian waters for the purpose of de- lighting in the mysteries of the midnigat sun, and who have fondly imagined tha: in | the town of Hammerfest, situated some- | a what scuth of the 7ist parallel of north latitude, they met with the last stage of civilization, as far es civilization is repre- sented by hotel life, will now find that provisions enough to guard against being snowed up for a long tim which goes to and from th. is conveyed by special messeng. northern terminus of the steamship serv- ice, which ccnnects with the Sofotes is. The intermediate passage is not lous, especially during the st months, as might be imagined. In % that region the ice breaks and leaves ‘the landscape comparatively clear during July and August, so that the effete sum hurt indeed, but covered with blood a that man. At places I found large caves or | they were not quite so far out of the world | tourist may make an arctic trip with litle as streaming from a wound in her chest. rooms from 10 to 40 feet wide, of equal| as they thought they were. This little | if any more discomfort than he would Cc. SELOUS. v length, and as much as 20 feet high. The | hotel is 500 miles farther north than Ham- | have in going to Evrope. ——>___ floors were fairly level. It was in a small | merfest. Some idea of its extreme north-| Provisions are brought to the hotel THE ONLY WHITE BUFFALO. one of these that night caught me, and | ern situation can be gained when it is | the same way, and it may, for th sees there I slept. How long? I do not know. | Stated that evea the quarters of the pres-| that there is always a good P Seen and Chased by Indians ana No noise save the low, seductive cadence | ent Jackson-Harmsworth expedition in| hand, come to be viewed as a haven of Hunters, buat Never Caught. From the Forest and Stream, During the summer of 1875 bands of In- dians returning from a hunt far out in the Plains brought in stories of having seen at different times and in different places, of the cool wind which worked its way Franz-Josephiand are hardly 1) miles through the mountain could be heard. hearer to the pole. Compared with other | ae high northern points which have in one A Cavern Filled With Light. way or another «become prominent, the The light which stole back down there | ores which most forcibly suggest them- from the morning sun soon awoke me, and | == — I limbered my stiffened joints for another safety by future arctic explorers who fail to make ccrnections with the pole. At any rate it is unique of its kind and stands without parallel as an point for tourists. The Mysterious Root. their black caps. The Cooktown blacks deserted their aboriginal haunts about the ‘Irevetons .ages ago, and rebuilt their vil- is and always in the center of a large n a effort. Day might hove been well ad {ART AND ARTISTS) sane on china is n- a white buffalo. They had used thelr Boe ise net up ge the eastern slope of Mt | vanced outside. Its flood of light was ter, and a pleasing border of wood violets horses In the effort to overtake It, to no | will induce them to go back to ther ol {Peaking through new cracks from above CaEce ietent oh pabike vtheee cn other pieces, and paints them with to nature, rather than in a conventional- ized manner. Roses he has also employ in the ornamentation of some of his mc recent specimens, and a very large p that he is covering in this way is espe- cially striking. and some even peeped up from_ below. Taking the line of the biggest ray, I chalk- ed my course through the dubious open- ings, up, down, back and over. All of a sudden a white sheet seemed to hang in front of me. It proved to be a cavern filled with light. A strange-looking arrow stood berpendicularly in it. This was the first sign of wood, vegetation or life. Leaping dcwn through an upenirg six or eight feet, and then sliding over a treacherous slab ten feet further to the floor, I found my- self in a chamber about twenty by forty feet, and about twenty feet high. Think- purpose, never being able to get anywhere near the animal. At first we did not pay much attention to these stories, but still it kept cropping up from different camps, and at last, in the fall of 1875, I myself had a chance to verify the truth of the report. I had been sent on duty north along the Red Deer river, and was camped near a large band of Blackfeet, who were hunting south of that river. The buffalo had moved north in vast numbers, and the prairie was black with them. I had gone out one morning with a party of Blackfeet to see one of their hunts, and home. The reason ‘is awe imbedded in superstition connected with the black pile. No white man has. ever been able to fathom the secr¢t of this ‘strange mountain, so, finding thdt no tribesman, as the legends go, has ever dared to go to the top, and that no white man had ever as- cended higher ‘than’ the “Pinnacle”—les: than half way up—the writer determined to explore thé'freak,“and to top the peak if it were possible to do so. The aboriginal guide over the Cook ‘ranges ‘declined to go to the foot of the Black cmevetons, even ‘or excessive pay. Finally, with the assist- ance of the intrepid mayor of Cooktown, |IM& that the faultlessly straight spear- Mr. H. J. Ellicott is now working upon a new and larger sketen model for the equestrian statue of Gea. Henry Slocum, to be erected on the battle field of Gettys burg. The committee which is to make | the award found ‘hat none of the com- peting sculptors had worked entirely aleng the lines that it favored, and so the con- testants have been requested to remodel their designs before the decision ts finalty made. In the new models the committee wishes that Gen. Slocum be represented as x * Quite a jolly party of artisis made a sketching trip down the river last Saturtay in a steam launch. Making an early stari, they steamed down to a point a littie below Mt. Vernon, where they landed and pro- ELEPHANTS IN AFRICA. — quickly as pocsible in the direction from which we had come. We were in time to intercept the elephants just as the fore- Most, an old cow, reached the line along which our feet had come in contact with the earth. I saw her step dead and scent the ground rapidly with her outstretched trunk, the point of which was moved quickly to and fro close to the ground. That brief examination was sufficient, her delicate sense of smell having evidertly conveyed to her brain the information that human beings, the dreaded enemies of her Tace. had lately passed that way, and might, therefore, stil be near her. How she conveyed the irformation to her com- panions I donot know, but in another mo- ment the whole herd had swung round and were making off at a shambling trot in the opposite direction. Then followed a long and exhausting chase in the intense heat of an African sun, which, however, re- sulted in the death of several elephants. On another occasicnp I remember follow- ing four enormcus bulls which had come to drink one night in a lagoon fermed by the overflow of the River Chobl. We took up the tracks at the first dawn of day, the elephants being not far ahead of us, and were in momentary expectation of coming up with them, when we suddenly found that they had become alarmed and had fied. An examination of the ground show- ed us that they had turned short round on reaching the track we had made when ap- Proaching the river on the previous day with a long retinue of Ka‘firs. Their Ikeenness of scent had at once enabled them to detect the taint left on the ground by human feet which had passed that way some twenty hours before, and as we never caught them up, was the means of seving them for. that day at least from the attentions of an elephant gun. A ‘Two Dayw Hunt. During 1885, some -five years before the @ccupation of Mashonaland by pioneers, I was camped on the banks of the Umfull Fiver, in company with a well-known Boer hunter, Cornelius Van Rooyen. We had returned to camp after a rare good day’s buffalo hunting, and were just about to discuss our rough but substantial evening’s meal, when two of the Kaffirs we had left at the carcass of one of the buffaloes came and reported that a herd of elephants had passed through the bush within sight of them, just as it was growing dusk. As the wind was favorable, they did not think the keen-scented animals had become aware of their presence, or taken alarm in any way, so we determined to follow them up the following day. The next mornit-g, therefore, at earliest dawn, we rode out and cut their spoor ‘some two miles beyond the spot where the Kaffirs had seen them the preceding even- ing, and a glance at the tracks showed us that they had still been walking quietly here, and had evidently not scented any of the dead buffaloes. The elephants had @ long start of about ten hours in front of us, but they had been feeding to some ex- tent, stripping a tree here and there of its bark, sometimes breaking off large branches, and even stopping now and then to dig up some succulent root. It looked as if they were altogether unsuspicious of danger, and might be expected to halt as soon as the sun became uncomfortably warm, in order to enjoy a midday siesta im a shady spot, as lazy, sober-minded ele- phants always do in parts of the country where they have not been much hunted. ‘There was among the great round and oblong tracks of some twenty large ele- phants, the spoor of a tiny calf that could not have been many days old, and the fact that so young an animal was among the herd made us feel sure that we should come up with them in the course of the day, for we did not think such a baby ele- Phant would be capable of traveling any very great distance without resting. We soon learned, too, by @ careful examina- tion of the ground that two bulls were with the herd, the one evidently an ant- mal of the largest size, while the second Was considerably smaller, but yet might be expected to carry tusks of about twenty to twenty-five pounds weight each. The big bull, we feared, would prove to be @ tuskless “elephant, ‘which both Van Rooyen and myself had lately seen in this district, the animal I have before men- tioned as the only tuskless bull elephant I have ever seen. Marvelous Endurance. We had ridden out from camp eccom- Panied by some half-dczen Kaffirs and a aiso to try and kill it for myself. My horse was a good one, and much faster than any belonging to the Indian hunters. I had got detached from the party, becoming tired of the slaughter, and must have been at least twenty miles from camp, when I made for a small clump of timber not far ceeded to paint the place. Red was the color most in use, so say the envious oncs who were not there, but the artists refute this false and malicious charge by pro- dveing their sketches to prove that the painting was literal, not metaphorical. the guidance and compantonship of HB. |h#ped stem: was the weapon of an abor- Purcell, the noted Queensland tribal ln- |!8ine, I fancied all sorts of queer things. guist, explorer and daring bushman, was |,, 70 ™y astonishment, the assagai was the secured. Mr. Purcell had ventured to the live root of some tree or shrub from the first tler, 600 feet up, a few years before. |CUtside, blackened in here by the decom- His experience in that fearful climb led |Pcsing oxide of iron. It came out of the him to decline the ascent even to the “Pin- | T00t, dropped in a perfectly vertical por- he appeared in battle, and he is to have a pair of field glasses in his hand. The jury of award has also suggested eev- eral mino> chaages in the costume, but the most important stipulation is in regard of a little glade. This we did in order to scare away lions, and then, allowing the old bushman to get a little, well-earned sleep, Van Rooyen and myself kept up the fires and from time to time turned the horses whenever they strayed into the = to the action of the horse. All four of the darkness. We had eaten nothing since the | off. intending to roast a portion of some | nacle,” where stands a crude pole to mark |t!n, pierced the floor and disappeared | animals’ feet must be upon th 3, as | Several of the party made excellent studies previous evening, nor had we brought any | buffalo meat I had on the saddle with me. | the achievement of man upon that perilous |2™0ng the rocks below. Leaving my kit, | it is thousht thar the meoncine ling | during the day, and every one enjoyed food with us: but to go a day without food As I approached the wood a band of about 100 animals burst out from the brush and made off to the south, and yet, most cer- tainly, in the middle of them was a white buffalo. Although they. were a quarter of a mile away, there could be no mistake about it; he was there as large as life, and quite white, and running like a deer. There was no time to do much more than take in the scene, but I gathered up the reins and was after him, determined to bag that buffalo or kill my horse. Oh, what a race it was, mile after mile; and although all the band, with the excep- tion of about a dozen, had split off and gone in different directions, the white ant- mal, with his body-guard of about a dozen, kept at about the same distance ahead. I could catch a glimpse of him now and then, and there was no doubt he was snow- white. Get within a shot I could not, for many miles. At last they began to tire, and, although my horse tired also, I had good hopes of coming up and getting a shot. Alas! for such a chance. Of a sud- den my horse lurched forward on his nose, sending me over his head onto the prairie, and turning a somersault himself, miss- ing me only a few feet. He had put his foot into a badger hole, and brought hopes of a white robe to a sudden end. —_—_+-e-+___—_ The Growth of the Gerfhan Navy. Prom the Fortnightly Review. The growth of the German navy since 1872 has been extraordinary. According to figures quoted in the reichstag, the in- crease in naval expenditure since thet date has been 527 per cent. The outlay of the North German confederation in 1870 was only £1,201,000; in 1885 that of the German empire stood at £2,119,000, while at the date of the Emperor William II's acces- sion it was £2,700,000, which by last year had risen to £4,315,000. The proposals of the German admiralty for the present year inxglved an expenditure of £6,450,000, of which more than £6,000,000 has been voted by the reichstag. During the present reign —in a period, that 1s to say, of nine years— no less than eighty-six new units have been added to the fleet. But yet neither Kaiser Wilhelm nor Admiral Holimann is satisfied. Like Oliver Twist, they are asking for more, and are making it very obvious that they intend to get more. Cap- tain Mahan’s “Influence of Sea Power on History” has evidently instructed others besides ourselves. The program of ships to be commenced during the next four years was not, in- deed, a particularly large one. it in- volved the construction of four battle- ships, six large cruisers, six smaller cruisers and thirty-six torpedo craft. What prob- ably alarmed the reichstag was the hint that war was coming at no very distant date, and the scarcely vetled pretension to dispute with England the command of deniy ‘put forward, ana public opinion ‘had ahru deniy put forws and pul opinion # not been fully prepared for them. The | or Part! int eee ee of Seance consequence was that the public and the | break it up In sbarp-edged, irregular chunks’ relchstag were bewil ‘and refusd to | crail sizes, from @ ton weight to the alse play into great outlay for as ob- | or a small house, and in all sorts of shapes, from a rude. to anything but taking my knotted , I chalked way efter it for at least hundred yards. Then the hungry thing disappeared through @ small aperture and was lost. Its size did not diminish in the least from the 11-inch diameter it measured in the cavern. No shoots or suckers curled out from its stem, and no semblance of earth fed its course. There was nothing save little handfuls of sandy gravel which had settled upon the level surface of the hard rock. A Strange Pilot. Retracing my chalked course, and taking my new discovery as a pilot to lead me upward from this wilderness of rock, I wended in‘and out after its winding course for an hour; losing, then finding it, and finally losing it for good. Where it came from is uncertain; where it went to ts equally so. After mcping and creeping here and there for two or three hours longer, a big, gray pillow of light lay in a yawning chasm beneath. It came from somewhere. Getting down into it and look- ing up, a silvery vista wound in and out from above, like the rays of a great search- light seeking out the darkness down there. Following it up and veering to the right past an ill-placed lot of jagged, overhang- ing rock, the hot air of the outer world warmed my face, and the noonday sun sweltered on the meridian above. Sentinel rock lay fully half a mile back and 500 feet further up in the air, thovgh invisible from the pinnacle on the first tier. The ascent from my exit to the apex. while Wearying and hazardous on the surface, re- quired no more of the perilous slides and climbing which nezessitated navigation within, and you didn’t have to go over by going under. The sun beat down merciless- ly. By 3 o'clock the top was reached, and the rock there-felt its first press of a man’s foot. The climber preferred rest to fee!- ings of triumph. 2 Deep down in the Black Trevetons the wind ecmes from all quarters and from below. Rock wallabys entering either side have been seen to emerge upon the other. ‘The inference is that they went through. When the sun has passed to the wrest and is low down yw the first tier, the ligt | it peeps in from the western shafts and rents, | Gloucester, Mass., the objective point of and the easterly and top holes darken. | his trip. This shows that the rays penetrate from eu ine woateand tom Delow sup first ties, aon Fe we gio duis teat at a depth of 500 or 600 feet, through that half mile << Loy ‘nee a that | Miss Alice E. Willoughby has chosen for the remainder of the Black Trevetons is | her summer's sketching, and she will start zmilar fo this huge section, then a small | Noren in a very few days, ‘The delightful ‘4 water colors that she made last year show her thorough sympathy with the class of work its way through the whole mountain from east to west, or elsewhere. By daring subjects that may be found in plenty in and about this picturesque fishing town, and slides down the face of great blocks, and often clearing twenty-foot gaps below, she will doubtless bring back many excel- lent sketches. Pile of herbless, grassless, groundless, ir- regular rocks, which have neither hand- holds nor foot-holds; with sharp, jagged points and ledges awaiting the sliding, in- cautious climber. A Mountain Cut in Half. Finding that no one would attempt the ascent of 2,000 feet or more, I bade camp adieu, shouldered my food kit, put on my fluted rubber-bottom shoes, into which hob- nails had been well and plentifully driven for protection, gave instructions, in case of failure to return in three days, faced the sun and the terrible mount before me and began the ascent with an iron-noosed, knotted rope as my only assistant. The highest peak in this second tier of coast range is about six miles long, and about four deep at the base. Just before the topmost peak is reached a dyke cuts the mountain nearly in half. The northern section is a rough, wooded rockland, with rich undergrowth and plentiful soil, like the side of any other ordinary mountain in the world. Suddenly this earth and botany stop. Some great god has taken his knife and gut right across the hills, cleaving the peak in twain from east to west. Begii ning at this point, where the vegetation ceases, the peak rises a bit higher, drops into a low bed like the boulder bottom of a@ large river, the waters of which had sunk out of sight, carrying all the sands and pebbles below and leaving nothing but the horrible, ghastly stones and their treacherously yawning cavities. Two Thousand Feet High. The hill then takes an irregular sweop up in tiers, until it rises to a height of over 2,000 feet. From the clear-cut woodland, which bisects the north hill, to the further- most base of the high southern peak, is fully four miles, and the mountains meas- ure three or four miles through at their base, and are fully two and a half miles thick at their waist, 600 or 700 feet up. ‘The foundation is a kind of coarse-grained or pebbied blue granite, showing sculptor crystals pf tin, which, still clinging to the crumbling outer rock, gives the surface a very sharp and dangerous face. To de- scribe the physical makeup of the Black Trevetons is difficult. There is nothing analogous to them in any part of the work Coliena formations have some’ regularity in stone or in she atfangement, hence the Giant's Causewry and similar rock piles cannot be used. for;.jilustration. Neither can weather-worn water-washed boul- Ger hilis like these in, Mauritius be utilized. These rocks dq not;bear the least sem- blance to rocks expayed by floods, age or apy such causes, They do not even himself thoroughly. In fact, *hey were very reluctant to leave the pleasant spot they had hit upon, but were at length suaded to do so, arriving in the city very early—the next morning. Those who en- jcyed the day in this wise were Messrs, | Harold L. Macdonald, George Gibbs, Ho- |bart Nichols, Spencer Nichols, Will Hi. !Chandice and his brothers, George and | Horace Chandlee, through whose courtesy the party had the use of the launca. * steed {8 more suggestive of ‘the varade ground thar. the battle field. The action of the horse in Mr. jeolt's new model 158 necessarily less spiritel than in his firet design, where no lim:tatioas were placed upon the action, but the animal is full of life nevertheless. Even in this prelim‘nary sketch the sculptor is paying a great deal of attention to the modeling of the gencr- al's head, and he is s2curing an admirable likeness.’ Mr. Ellicott’s portrait Lust of the late Mr. George Y. Cotlin, which is to be placed in the Corcoraa Art Gallery, is now finished and nas been seen and approved by the committee. which vi: ed his sivcio for the purpose of pa i * and pass the night without a blanket is not looked upon’as any very great hard- ship by an elephant hunter, and we should have felt quite happy had we been sure of overtaking our game on the morrow. The Next Morning. About midnight we tied the horses to a tree close behind one of our fires, and then lying down ourselves with our backs to the blaze, got what rest we could be- fore daylight. As soon as we could see we saddled up and once more took up the spoor of the elephants, which old Marman followed at a more sober pace than on the preceding evening, though he still got over | the ground at a good sharp walk. For mile after mile we stuck to it, and with every mile the chance of ever overtaking them seemed to grcw smaller. We had twice off-saddled the horses and were thinking of doing so for the third time The cool of early dawn had gradually given place to a temperature which, cul- minating when the sun was at its zenith, seemed at length about to become more bearable, as the glowing orb was now dipping toward the west. And yet the cle- phants seemed further away from us than ever. Suddenly old Marman stopped as we came to some tracks crossing the spoor we were following at right angles. After @ quick, eager examination he said in the Matabele language: “Their familiar spirits amegiosi) have deserted them,” and then told us that the animals we were following were not far in front of us, as they had recrossed their own tracks but a short time ago. Killed Them at Last. Shortly after this we came up with the animals themselves in some very thick brush, and shot the two bulls, the biggest proving to be a tusker with teeth weigh- ing slightly @ver forty pounds each, while the tusks of the smaller bull cid not weigh quite forty pourds the pair. The Kaffirs we had left behind the previous day turn- ed up, contrary to our expectations, be- fore dar and that night, after a forty- eight hors’ fast, we all had a glorious feed on elephant’s heart and trunk. The next day we chopped out the tusks, and reached our camp on the Umfuli on the evening of the fourth day after we had left it. We should, however, never have overtaken these elephants had they not made a turn and recrossed their own Spoor, unfortunately for them, just in front of us, for I believe that they had traveled just as far durirg the last day and night as they had done in the course of the pre- vious twenty-four hours, and, judging from my own experience on the foregoing and many other occasions, I am of opin- jon that when elephants have Leen much Persecuted they travel continually during the whole year at the rate of from twen- ty to fifty miles every twenty-four hours. The South African elephant, unlike any other animal with which I am acquainted, never, or at any rate, very rarely, li down to rest, though he will roll in mud or rub himself against the side of an ant heap. I make thig statement advisedly, as I have seen altogether some thousands of elephants sleeping, but all have been standing; nor have I ever seen even the impression on the ground where one has | been reposing. At night elephants travel | and feed, taking their rest during the hot- test hours of the day, during which time they stand in the shade of large trees, or in the recesses of the wait-a-bit thorn jungles, for which they have such a strong Dredeliction. Hunting as a Business, Elephant hunting as a business has now become a thing of the past in South Africa, for the game Is no longer worth the candle. In the years 1872, ‘73 and ‘74, however, al- though I had to do an immense amount of hard work, I found it easy enough to pay all my expenses by elephant hunting in the country to the north and northwest of Matabeleland. During that period I hunted entirely on foot, using the commonest of old muzzie-leading trade guns and cheap powder, that was sold to the natives in five-pound bags. My bag for the three x * Carl Rakeman is now in Warrenton, Va. spending his time in sketching in the beau- tiful country that has been made familiar to the Washington public through the ng Sac brush of Mr. Richard N. Brooke. Mr. Lucien Powell is known here almost * entirely through his work in landscape painting, and it is a pleasant surprise to learn of his success in a distinctly different line, that of portraiture. In spite of the fact that he so rarely strays into this field it would seem as if he might be eminently successful in it, judging from the golden opinions that his portrait of Prof. H. H. Harris has been winning in Richmond. He has abandoned his studio here for the season, and is spending the warm weather in sketching around his summer home, near Paxson, Va. * * * Mr. William H. Machen has been dividing his time between the painting of land- scapes and flowets, occasionally turning his hand to birds. He has had a good deal of experience with the members of the feathered tribe and can indicate with skill the soft downy texture of a quail's breast, or the brilliant sheeny spots of color on the wild duck. Among the flower subjects that he has done recently are peontes and Mlacs, a study of a large bunch of the latter in a wicker basket being par- ticularly satisfactory. Another pieasing canvas is a vase filled with pale yellow roses, extremely attractive @s a bit of color. In landecipe he has been working upon the motives that he has obtained in the vicinity of Rock Creek, and there are several scenes in which the effect of light is notably good. The embroidery of gold and green in the sunlit foliage and the wavering reflections of the trees in the still water make these subjects very beau- tiful * * A three-masted schooner lying at her dock, together with several scows laden with broken stone, furnished the motive for Mr. Carl Weller’s most recent water color. It is a breezy little sketch; though dashed off in an hour or two, it hardly more than suggests the scene. He obtained this study atthe wharves near the old ob- servatory, and was so much struck with the multitude of themes that were to be found in that vicinity that he plans to spend much of the time that he has for sketching at this spot. In about a month he will leave on his summer vacation, and it is most probable that he will make East *** Rudolph Evans, the talented youg@e sculptor, has put aside his work in the plastic art for the summer, and is spending his time in recreation at Front Royal, Va. What litte art work he will probably do will be in the line of drawing, rather than modeling. — Victoria Punishes Lese Majeste. Frem the London Figaro. “I_was being shown over the royal yacht at Portsmouth by an admiral, and he ex- plained the various points of interest. At last we came to the queen's cabin. 'Here,” said he, “is where the queen found a mid- dy trying on her bonnet at the lookii glass, and she gave him a box on the cars, which resounded right away to the quar- landing on sharp points or other pieces, I found myself a ragged wreck, - into camp at deep dusk—8 o’clock—having de- scercedin less than six hours what it took me nearly a day and a half to climb. Asbestos Rope. From the Cifeago Inter-Ocean. Asbestos formerly in use now has a for- ** Among the portraits with which Mr. Leo- pold Moehlcr has been busying himself is @ pastel of a woman with jet black hair and penetrating brown eyes, a very fascin- ating head in every respect. The expres- sion of the face has been rendered with great delicacy by the artist, and the eyes Philadelphia’s Franklin Statue. From the Philadelphia Record. Eb proportion in favor of the f since it is but little affected by the atmos- phate Tae Tien meets fiber ts also work- 5 gE fF zi i fe “Say, pop, come out and down him. Jimmy Ryan said his pa could lick mine, and I sald he couldn’t, and they're waitin’ for you outside.” i i #