Sindbad & The Elephant Graveyard, One Thousand And One Nights

“On his seventh and last voyage, he [Sindbad] said, he came across an elephants’ graveyard. It happened, according to Sindbad, after he had been captured by pirates and sold to a rich merchant. The merchant gave him a bow and arrows and ordered him to shoot elephants for their tusks from hiding places in the trees. For two months he managed to kill an elephant every day. Then one morning he found himself surrounded by a herd of angry elephants. They tore down his tree and carried him off on a long march, leaving him on a hillside covered with elephant bones and tusks. He realised, he said, it was an elephants’ graveyard and that he had been brought there to be shown there was no need to kill elephants when their tusks could be obtained merely for the trouble of picking them up.”