400 



THE ELEPIL\XT. 



[rART ym. 



elephants as tending the woiuided, but as burying the 

 dead : 



*' "Oroiv eTTKTTfi rr^g TeXzurrig b ^oovog 

 KoJvoD riXryjg Siixuvav o ^ivog <^='^=<."^ 



The Singhalese have a further superstition in relation 

 to the closing hfe of the elephant : they beheve that, on 

 feehng the approach of dissolution, he repaks to a soli- 

 tary valley, and there resigns himself to death. 



A native who accompanied Mr. Cripps, when hunting 

 in the forests of Anarajapoora, intimated that he was 

 then in the immediate \'icinity of the spot " to which the 

 elephants came to die,'" but that it was so mysteriously 

 concealed, that although every one beheved in its 

 existence, no one had ever succeeded in penetrating 

 to it. At the corral which I have described at 

 Kornegalle, in 1847, Dehigame, one of the Kandyan 

 chiefs, assured me it was the universal behef of his 

 countrymen, that the elephants, when about to die, 

 resorted to a valley in Saffragam, among the mountains 

 to the east of Adam's Peak, which was reached by a 

 narrow pass ^vith walls of rock on either side, and that 

 there, by the side of a lake of clear water, they took 

 their last repose.^ It was not mthout mterest that 

 I afterwards recognised this tradition in the story of 

 Sinbad of the Sea, who in his Seventh voyage, after 

 convepng the presents of Haroun al Easchid to the 

 King of Serendib, is wrecked on his return from Ceylon 

 and sold as a slave to a master who employs him iu 



^ PniLE, Expositio de Elq)h., 1. 

 243. 



2 The selection by animals of a 

 place to die, is not confined to the 

 elepliant. DARA\*rN says, that in 

 South America " the gixanacos 

 (llamas) appear to have favourite 

 spots for l\'ing down to die ; on the 

 banks of the Santa Cruz river, in 

 certain circimiscribed spaces which 

 were generally bushy trnd all near 



the water, the ground was actually 

 white with their bones ; on one such 

 spot I counted between ten and 

 twenty heads." — Ned. Voy. ch. viii. 

 The same has been remarked in the 

 Eio Gallegos ; and at St. .Jago in 

 the Cape de Verde Islands, Dakwin 

 saw a retired corner similarly covered 

 with the bones of the goat, as if it 

 were " the burial-pTouud of all the 

 ffoats in the islmid." 



