l8 The Rifle and Hound in Ceylon. 



young trees from sheer malice, and from plain to forest 

 he stalks majestically at break of day, " monarch of all 

 he surveys." 



A person who has never seen a wild elephant can 

 form no idea of his real character, either mentally or 

 physically. The unwieldy and sleepy-looking beast, 

 who, penned up in his cage at a menagerie, receives a 

 sixpence in his trunk, and turns around with difficulty 

 to deposit it in a box ; whose mental powers seem to 

 be concentrated in the idea of receiving buns tossed 

 into a gaping mouth by children's hands, this very 

 beast may have come from a warlike stock. His sire 

 may have been the terror of a district, a pitiless high- 

 wayman, whose oul thirsted for blood ; who, lying in 

 wait in some thick bush, would rush upon the unwary 

 passer-by, and know no pleasure greater than the act of 

 crushing his victim to a shapeless mass beneath his feet. 

 How little does his tame sleepy son resemble him ! 

 Instead of browsing on the rank vegetation of wild 

 pasturage, he devours plum-buns ; instead of bathing 

 his giant form in the deep rivers and lakes of his native 

 land, he steps into a stone-lined basin to bathe before 

 the eyes of a pleased multitude, the whole of whom 

 form their opinion of elephants in general from the 

 broken-spirited monster that they see before them. 



I have even heard people exclaim, upon hearing 

 anecdotes of elephant-hunting, " Poor things ! " 



Poor things, indeed ! I should like to see the very 

 person who thus expresses his pity going at his best 

 pace with a savage elephant after him : give him a 

 lawn to run upon if he likes, and see the elephant gain- 

 ing- a foot in every yard of the chase, fire in his eye, 

 fury in his headlong charge ; and would not the flying 



