90 A COLLECTING TRIP : 
and sail somewhere around the 28th of the month for 
Singapore. 
With much love to every one, 
Always affectionately, 
Rosamond. 
Strand Hotel, Rangoon. 
December 13, 1906 
Dear Mother : 
Tom received a very nice letter from his father. 
This morning, as well as yesterday, we went out to the 
teak lumber yards and saw the elephants piling teak, 
and it was a great sight. They really show almost 
human intelligence about it. They lift up a tremend- 
ous piece or rather log of teak with their trunks and 
rest it against their tusks; then they walk along it to 
the mill, where it is cut up into square pieces, ete. 
They push along the ground with their heads huge 
trees of teak and when the load goes the wrong way 
they walk slowly up to the further end, push it with 
their tusks the right way, walk back to the other end 
and then push it again with their heads. One of the 
managers of this yard told us that first class elephants 
like those we saw were worth forty thousand rupees 
each. I think, however, he was stuffing us. He says 
that a wild elephant, just caught from the jungle, 
taken down to these yards, in six months’ time, just 
from watching the other elephants, becomes as capable 
as the elephants they have had for twenty years. It 
seems very curious to drive down a small native street 
and see Singer sewing machines advertised in English, 
Hindustani and Burmese, and such queer writings 
