This Is A New Release Of The Original 1913 Edition.

Travel through wild Africa with Col. Stigand as he hunts elephant, rhino, lion and antelope like the hunters of old used to do. There is something so fascinating and absorbing about elephant hunting that those who have done much of it can seldom take any interest again in any other form of sport. It seems so vastly superior to all other big game shooting that, once they have surrendered themselves to its charms, they cannot even treat any other form of hunting seriously. Everything else seems little and insignificant by comparison. Invaluable safari and hunting advice.

Why have elephants—and our preconceptions about them—been central to so much of human thought? From prehistoric cave drawings in Europe and ancient rock art in Africa and India to burning pyres of confiscated tusks, our thoughts about elephants tell a story of human history. In Elephant Trails, Nigel Rothfels argues that, over millennia, we have made elephants into both monsters and miracles as ways to understand them but also as ways to understand ourselves. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including municipal documents, zoo records, museum collections, and encounters with people who have lived with elephants, Rothfels seeks out the origins of our contemporary ideas about an animal that has been central to so much of human thought. He explains how notions that have been associated with elephants for centuries—that they are exceptionally wise, deeply emotional, and have a special understanding of death; that they never forget, are beloved of the gods, and suffer unusually in captivity; and even that they are afraid of mice—all tell part of the story of these amazing beings. Exploring the history of a skull in a museum, a photograph of an elephant walking through the American South in the early twentieth century, the debate about the quality of life of a famous elephant in a zoo, and the accounts of elephant hunters, Rothfels demonstrates that elephants are not what we think they are—and they never have been. Elephant Trails is a compelling portrait of what the author terms "our elephant."