Lo now, his strength [is] in his loins,.... The strength of the elephant is well known, being able to carry a castle on its back, with a number of men therein; but what follows does not seem so well to agree with it;and his force [is] in the navel of his belly; since the belly of the elephant is very tender; by means of which the rhinoceros, its enemy, in its fight with it, has the advantage of it, by getting under its belly, and ripping it up with its horn .
In like manner Eleazar the Jew killed one of the elephants of Antiochus, by getting between its legs, and thrusting his sword into its navel ; which fell and killed him with the weight of it. On the other hand, the "river horse" is covered with a skin all over, the hardest and strongest of all creatures , as not to be pierced with spears or arrows ; and of it dried were made helmets, shields, spears, and polished darts .
That which Monsieur Thevenot saw had several shot fired at it before it fell, for the bullets hardly pierced through its skin. We made several shot at him, says another traveller , but to no purpose; for they would glance from him as from a wall.
And indeed the elephant is said to have such a hard scaly skin as to resist the spear : and Pliny , though he speaks of the hide of the river horse being so thick that spears are made of it; yet of the hide of the elephant, as having targets made of that, which are impenetrable.
Aelian. de Amimal. l. 17. c. 44. Plin. l. 8. c. 10, 20. Vid. Solin. c. 38. Diodor. Sic. l. 3. p. 167. & Strabo. Geograph. l. 16. p. 533. Joseph. Ben Gorion. Hist. Heb. l. 3. c. 20. 1 Maccab. vi. 46. Diodor.
Sic. ut supra. (l. 3. p. 167) Plin. l. 8. c. 25. Ptolem. Geograph. l. 7. c. 2. Fragment. Ctesiae ad Calcem Herodot. p. 701. Ed. Gronov. Boius apud Kircher. China cum Momument. p. 193. Herodot. ut supra.
(p. 701) Aristot. Hist. Animal. l. 2. c. 7. Plin. l. 11. c. 39. Travels, part 1. c. 72. Dampier's Voyages, vol. 2. part 2. p. 105. Heliodor. Ethiop. Hist. l. 9. c. 18. Nat. Hist. l. 11. c. 39. Vid. Vossium in Melam.
de Situ Orbis, l. 1. c. 5. p.