‘I
f the great beasts are gone, man will surely die of a great loneliness of spirit’—an apt quotation with which to round off this exciting tale of a hunt for a rogue elephant in Assam.
Should be on the shelf besides such classics as J.H. Williams’s <i >Elephant Bill</i> and P.D. Stracey’s <i >Elephant Gold.</i>
Elephants are beautiful, graceful, gentle creatures, capable of living with and for humans. But sometimes a wild elephant goes musth, mad and disoriented. He can then become a rogue, a man-killer, and will attack a village and its inhabitants at random, hurling the nearest human to the ground and trampling him to a pulp.
One such rogue, who had been terrorising the inhabitants of several villages in Assam, has to be hunted down and killed. Capturing it would be of no use, for in the crazed condition it would become even more dangerous. Tarquin Hall, a writer and journalist, joins the small group assigned the task of hunting down the rogue, and gives us a graphic account of the chase, the elephant’s depredations, and its dramatic last stand before being brought down by a high-velocity bullet. One feels sorry for the elephant in spite of its murderous career. This world has no place for misfits.
In the course of his exciting and entertaining tale of the hunt, Tarquin Hall gives the reader many interesting asides on life in the Assamese countryside, along with vivid pen portraits of his hunter friends, mahouts, tea-planters, and village folk. It works both as a travel book and a log of the hunt. Should be on the shelf besides such classics as J.H. Williams’s Elephant Bill and P.D. Stracey’s Elephant Gold.