104 FIRST ATTEMPTS. 



At last all my plans were completed. Fortunately the elephants had 

 been absent from the neighbourhood up to this time — there were three herds 

 which commonly frequented it — but on the 5th of November the trackers 

 came in early to say there were about thirty elephants in cover D ! Im- 

 mediately messengers started to all the villages near, where orders had been 

 given to the people to hold themselves in readiness to help in the great 

 Government elephant-catching scheme. Still it was twelve o'clock before 

 they collected. I fumed and chafed at the delay, and I am afraid some of 

 the last to arrive did not find me in the best of humours. However, shortly 

 after twelve I started with about five hundred of them — far too many, as I 

 afterwards found — and when we approached the temple I ordered one body 

 to the left, to station themselves along the north-east bank of the river ; a 

 second to the right, to cut the elephants off from communication with cover 

 E ; and a third, composed of the best men, chiefly Morlayites, to drive the 

 elephants out of cover D. They were to begin to beat at the temple, and we 

 hoped that the elephants would be kept straight for ford A by the guiding- 

 lines of stops. I took my own station near the ford on the west side of 

 the river, with the object of giving the elephants a final impetus forward 

 as they approached it, and to guard the gate with my rifles when they 

 had entered. 



After the usual delay, inseparable from anything natives have to do, I 

 heard the beat begin, half a mile distant, and presently five elephants 

 approached the crossing of the river, but kept themselves concealed in 

 the thick jungle between it and the Honglewaddy channel. I observed 

 that they were looking back wistfully as if for their fellows, nor did the 

 beaters follow them up as quickly as they should have done. After 

 some time the five went back, whilst the shouts and shots of the beaters 

 continued near the spot from which the elephants had been originally 

 started. I did not like to leave my post at the ford ; but at last, as no news 

 came, nor was there any sign of more elephants approaching, I stationed a 

 man, in whom I thought I might repose confidence, at the gate, and went 

 with my rifles to see what was the matter. I found that the main body of 

 the elephants had not left cover D, chiefly on account of numbers of the men 

 forming the guiding-line on the south having left their places, and so con- 

 fused the elephants by joining the beaters, and shouting in all directions, that 

 they did not know which way to flee. They had therefore ensconced them- 

 selves in an extensive and almost impenetrable thicket of thorns, whilst the 

 fiends in human shape who had spoilt all my plans were mobbing them in 

 every direction, at a respectful distance, yelling at the top of their voices, 

 and apparently quite oblivious of what the object to be attained was. I 



