St Nicholas [serial] . humanassailants. For one or two hours the cow carries on thisexhausting struggle before the men dare to ven-ture on the water to pick up the end of the ropefastened to the float. Just as a savage bull maybe led by one finger in the ring through his nose,so the exhausted cow now follows the tug of thelight line, which is made fast about a tree, whileblack hands haul in the slack, the young hippo-potamus following the larger animal to shore. Abullet from an elephant gun ends all unnecessarycruelty, and then the youngster, squealing, is care-fully captured and loaded into a
St Nicholas [serial] . humanassailants. For one or two hours the cow carries on thisexhausting struggle before the men dare to ven-ture on the water to pick up the end of the ropefastened to the float. Just as a savage bull maybe led by one finger in the ring through his nose,so the exhausted cow now follows the tug of thelight line, which is made fast about a tree, whileblack hands haul in the slack, the young hippo-potamus following the larger animal to shore. Abullet from an elephant gun ends all unnecessarycruelty, and then the youngster, squealing, is care-fully captured and loaded into a cage, to spend alife of ease and lazy luxury behind the steel barsof a menagerie tank. Finally, trapping lions and tigers and rhinoce-roses and hippopotami is only retail businesscompared with some of the drives the trapperconducts in Africa when he enlists the natives ofvillages for thirty miles around and traps lions,deers, elands, zebras, giraffes, buffaloes, and adozen other species of beasts all at the same THE TIGER DOES NOT ALWAYS COME OUT VICTORIOUS IN THE »*• 162 THE MODERN WILD-ANIMAL TRAPPER AND HIS CAPTIVES [Dec, One of these drives requires weeks of prepa-ration. An enormous circular stockade is erected,a half-mile in diameter, ten feet high, and pro-vided with a huge V-shaped entrance more thana mile across at the wide end. Out into the jungle, ten or fifteen miles fromthis stockade, the trapper leads his army of twoor three thousand men armed with shields andassagais. Like a spool of thread unwound, thisskein of ebony warriors, the men marching thirtyor forty feet apart, extends itself single file in a rings from all sides at once, the beasts flee pre-cipitately. Herds of the gaudy-striped zebra, ofthe graceful eland, and of long-necked, spottedgiraffes flee panic-stricken for the life that is inthem. The lion and his mate bound to their feet,sniff the air, and defiantly prepare for fight; butas the racket approaches they are
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookidstnicholasserial371dodg
