time I brought her to a stand in the dry bed of a water-course, where I fired at fifteen yards, aiming where I thought the heart lay, upon which she again made off. Having loaded, I followed, and had very nearly lost her; she had turned abruptly to the left, and was far out of sight among the trees. Once more I brought her to a stand, and dismounted from my horse. There we stood together alone in the wild wood. I gazed in wonder at her extreme beauty, while her soft dark eye, with its silky fringe, looked down imploringly at me, and I really felt a pang of sorrow in this moment of triumph for the blood I was shedding. Pointing my rifle towards the skies, I sent a bullet through her neck. On receiving it, she reared high on her hind legs, and fell backward with a heavy crash, making the earth shake around her. A thick stream of dark blood spouted out from the wound, her colossal limbs quivered for a moment, and she expired." But the most important of our hunter's labors was in the elephantine line, and he more frequently refers to them in his pages, having, to use his own phrase, "bagged" one hundred of these forest mammoths. The male is much larger than the female. The females of African origin, unlike those of Asia, have tusks as well as the male; and the price of their ivory in the London market is from £28 to £32 per cwt., which is more than the average weight of a tusk, though some have reached 173 pounds. The elephant makes his food of branches, leaves, and roots of trees, and a variety of bulbs, in obtaining which he will turn up the ground with his tusks for acres. He has a great horror of man and herds; will fly at the approach of a child. His timidity confines his resorts to the most remote and inaccessible parts; and the hunter can only, by inconceivable toil and hardship, come upon these retreats. The following is a graphic description of an elephant hunt: AN ELEPHANT HUNT. "Presently, on reconnoitering the surrounding country, I discovered a second herd, consisting of five bull elephants, which were quietly feeding about a mile to the northward. The cows were feeding toward a rocky ridge that stretched away from the base of the hillock on which I stood. Burning with impatience to commence the attack, I resolved to try the stalking system with these, and to hunt the troop of bulls with dogs and horses. Having thus decided, I directed the guides to watch the elephants from the summit of the hillock, and with a beating heart I approached them. The ground and wind favoring me, I soon gained the rocky ridge toward which they were feeding. They were now within one hundred yards, and I resolved to enjoy the pleasure of watching their movements for a little before I fired. They continued to feed slowly toward me, breaking the branches from the trees with their trunks, and eating the leaves and tender shoots. I soon selected the finest in the herd, and kept my eye on her in particular. At length two of the troop had walked slowly past at about sixty yards, and the one which I had selected was feeding, with two others, on a thorny tree before me. My hand was now as steady as the rock on which it rested; so, taking a deliberate aim, I let fly at her head a little behind the eye. She got it hard and sharp, just where I aimed, but it did not seem to affect her much. Uttering a loud cry, she wheeled about, when I gave her the second ball close behind the shoulder. All the elephants uttered a strange, rumbling L 1 noise, and made off in a line to the northward at a brisk, ambling pace, We conclude our extracts from these deeply interesting volumes of Mr. Cumming with the following, which relate to the antelope, the crocodile, hippopotamus, leopard, hyæna, etc. CHASE OF THE LEOPARD. "On the morning of the 22d I rode into camp, after unsuccessfully following the spoor of a herd of elephants for two days in a westerly course. Having partaken of some refreshment, I saddled up two steeds and rode down the bank of Ngotwani with the Bushman, to seek for any game I might find. After riding about a mile along the river's green bank, I came suddenly upon an old male leopard, lying under the shade of a thorn grove, and panting from the great heat. Although I was within sixty yards of him, he had not heard the horses' tread. I thought he was a lioness, and, dismounting, took a rest in my saddle on the old Gray, and sent a bullet into him. He sprang to his feet, and ran half way down the river's bank, and stood to look about him, when I sent a second bullet into his person, and he disappeared over the bank. The ground being very dangerous, I did not disturb him by following then, but I at once sent Ruyter back to camp for the dogs. Presently he returned with Wolf and Boxer, very much done up with the sun. I rode forward, and on looking over the bank the leopard started up and sneaked off alongside of the tall reeds, and was instantly out of sight. I fired a random shot from the saddle, to encourage the dogs, and shouted to them; they, however, stood looking stupidly round, and would not take up his scent at all. I led them over his spoor again and again, but to no purpose; the dogs seemed quite stupid, and yet they were Wolf and Boxer, my two best." CROCODILE SHOOTING. "Presently, looking over the bank. I beheld three enormous crocodiles basking on the sand on the opposite side. I was astonished at their awful appearance and size, one of them appearing to me to be sixteen or eighteen feet in length, with a body as thick as that of an ox. On observing us, they plunged into the dead water by the side of the stream. The next minute, one of them popping up his terrible head in the middle of the stream, I made a beautiful shot, and sent a ball through the middle of his brains. The convulsions of death which followed were truly awful. At first he sank for an instant to the shot, but, instantly striking the bottom with his tail, he shot up above the water, when he struggled violently, sometimes on his back, and then again on his belly, with at one time his head and fore feet above the water, and immediately after his tail and hind legs, the former lashing the water with a force truly astounding. Clouds of sand accompanied him in all his movements, the strong stream carrying him along with it, till at length the struggle of death was over, and he sank to rise no more." A HERD OF HIPPOPOTAMI. "I soon found fresh sport, and after holding on for several miles, just as the sun was going down, and as I entered a dense reed cover, I came upon the fresh lairs of four hippopotami. They had been lying sleeping on the margin of the river, and, on hearing me come crackling through the reeds, had plunged into the deep water. I at once ascertained that they were newly started, for the froth and bubbles were still on the spot where they had plunged in. Next moment I heard them blowing a little way down the river. I then headed them, and, with considerable difficulty, owing to the cover and the reeds, at length came right down above where they were standing. It was a broad part of the river, with a sandy bottom, and the water came half way up their sides. There were four of them, three cows and an old bull; they stood in the middle of the river, and, though alarmed, did not appear aware of the extent of the impending danger. "I took the sea-cow next me, and with my first ball gave her a mortal wound, knocking loose a great plate on the top of her skull. She at once commenced plunging round and round, and then occasionally remained still, sitting for a few minutes on the same spot. On hearing the report of my rifle, two of the others took up stream, and the fourth dashed down the river; they trotted along, like oxen, at a smart pace, as long as the water was shallow." THE ANTELOPE. "After several unsuccessful stalks for sable antelope, I at length met with the success my perseverance deserved. Returning in the afternoon of the 20th homeward, I suddenly observed a herd of about ten of them in thick cover on the mountain's ridge. I commenced ascending the rugged acclivity as fast as I could, for the daylight would be gone in a very short time. When I had got within two hundred yards of them, I found it almost impossible to get in any nearer, as I must cross a stony flat in sight of several of the ever-wary does; it was, moreover, now so late that I could not well see the sights of my rifle. I had almost resolved not to disturb them, and to return to camp; on second thoughts, however, I resolved to give it a trial. I made a successful stalk, and crossed this dangerous rocky flat unobserved. There was no moss nor heather under my knees, but a mass of sharp, adamantine fragments of rock, yet this I did not heed." 66 THE CAMP ROBBED BY HYENAS. Our dogs kept up an incessant barking during the night, and we imagined that lions were prowling around our camp. In the morning, however, we discovered that we had been favored with the presence of far less illustrious, yet more presuming visitors. A pack of audacious hyænas had visited our fireside, and, not content with cracking and swallowing the bones which they found there, they had eaten our table-cloth, which consisted of the skin of a sable antelope, and carried off the lid of our canteen and two large camp-stools, which I lately had made to order in Colesberg. One of these we had the good fortune to recover, minus the rheimpys; the other will probably be found in after years, and preserved as a Bechuana or Bushman relic. ART. VI.-RAIL-ROADS AND TRANSPORT, AT HOME AND ABROAD. IN Vol. VII. of the Review, we published an elaborate paper upon the railroads of Great Britain, in which was exhibited the extraordinary progress of that enterprise there, and the almost magical results which have followed. At the present time we shall take a survey of the workings of the same machinery in our own country, as compared with those abroad, prefacing it with some general remarks upon the American system of intercommunication at large. Soon after the Revolution, New-York and Pennsylvania set about the construction of canals, and so important was the matter of internal communication regarded, in Congress, that the Secretary of State, Mr. Gallatin, was requested, in 1817, to project a general system for the country. The Erie Canal was begun in 1817, and completed in 1825, for the connection of the Hudson with the lakes, at a cost of about twelve millions of dollars, or, including the enlargement in 1835, nearly twenty-five millions of dollars! The total length is 363 miles. Mr. M. Chevalier, who published, not long since, a work upon the modes of transport in the United States, estimates the length of all the canals at that time, 1843, 4,333, with 2,359 in projection, much of which has since been finished. The total cost, to the time of his estimate, was £27,870,964, or nearly $130,000,000. The canals of the United States to those of Great Britain, compared by population, are in length as 9 to 4, and to those of France as 13 to 4. The inland steam navigation of the country has also grown to be a subject of proud gratulation, and no nation in the world can at this time vie with us. on the Dr. Lardner gives a list of the first class steamers Hudson in 1838, and at the present time, which shows, on the single point of length, the following extraordinary improvement : No water "All the vessels more recently constructed are, accordingly, finished and decorated in the most luxuriant manner. communication in the world can compare with them. Nothing can exceed the splendor and luxury of the furniture. Silk velvet, and the most expensive carpeting, mirrors of immense size, gilding and carving are used profusely in their decoration. Even the engineroom in some of them is lined with mirrors. In the Alida, for ex 33 VOL. I. ample, the end of the room containing the machinery is composed of one large mirror, in which the movements of the highly finished machinery are reflected." On the Mississippi and other western waters, a class of boats, scarcely less splendid, have come into use, but worked upon principles entirely different, and with greatly reduced security to person and life. They are worked with high-pressure steam, without condensation, and to obtain the benefit derived from a vacuum in the low-pressure boats, the steam is worked at an extraordinary pressure, reaching, ordinarily, 150, and sometimes 200 pounds to the square inch. Accidents to these boats are frequent, and occur in a variety of ways. When the boilers are constructed with returning flues, the space left is so small, the slightest variation in the quantity of water contained, or in the trim of the vessel, causes the upper flues to be uncovered, become red hot, and collapse with frightful force and loss of life. And this cause of explosion results from the great accumulation of mud, from the rivers, in the boiler. This cuts the action of the fire off from the water, and concentrates it all upon the iron, which soon becoming red hot, softens and bursts. The remedy is in continually "blowing off," before the mud can accumulate in quantities to be dangerous. In the better class of boats on the Mississippi river, however, there is a wiser and far more secure system of management of late adopted, and travelers may feel much more at their ease than in former times, since accidents upon these boats are growing very rare. It is a pity the example could not be more widely followed; and that, if the interest of owners be not a sufficient stimulant, some method of coercion has not been devised by government over the refractory. Hundreds of thousands of lives are lost every year by the sheerest negligence, or by the most criminal cupidity. There must be a remedy somewhere, and the calls of humanity demand its early enforcement. In speaking of the Mississippi boats, Dr. Lardner says: "The magnitude and splendor of these boats is little, if at all inferior to those of the Hudson. They are, however, constructed more with a view to the accommodation of freight, as they carry down the river large quantities of cotton and other produce, as well as passengers, to the port of New-Orleans. Many of these vessels are three hundred feet and upwards in length, and are capable of carrying a thousand tons freight and three or four hundred deck passengers, besides the cabin passengers. The traffic in goods and passengers of the entire extent of the valley of the Mississippi is carried by these vessels, except that portion which is floated down by the stream in a species of raft, called flat boats. The following statistics, from another source, will show the rapid increase of steam navigation upon Western waters : In 1815 there were in use about 14 steamboats. |