No wonder! It, had tried my own powers to scale it.
"At times he came so close to me in his desperate efforts, that I could have touched his horns with the muzzle of my gun; and I had prepared to give him a blow whenever I could get a good chance.

I never saw a creature behave so fiercely.

The fact was, that I had hit him with my bullet,--the wound was there along his jaw, and bleeding freely.

The pain of it maddened him; but that was not the only cause of his fury, as I afterwards discovered.
"Well.

After several unsuccessful attempts to scale the cone, he varied his tactics, and commenced butting the ant-heap as though he would bring it down.