258 THE MINDS AND MANNERS 



The orang-utan is only half the fighter that the chimpanzee 

 is. Even the adult males are not persistently aggressive, or 

 inflamed by savage desires to hurt somebody. 



Courage in Elephants as an Asset. In all portions of 

 India wherein tiger hunting with elephants is practiced, ele- 

 phants with good courage are at a premium. No elephant is fit 

 to carry a howdah in a line of beaters, with a valuable sahib on 

 board, unless its courage can stand the acid test of a wounded 

 tiger's charge. When an elephant can endure without panic 

 an infuriated tiger climbing up its frontispiece to get at the 

 unhappy mahout and the hunter, that elephant belongs in the 

 courageous class. The cowardly elephant screams in terror, 

 bolts for the rear, and if there is a tree in the landscape promptly 

 wrecks the howdah and the sportsman against its lower 

 branches. 



A "rogue" elephant always reminds me of my Barbados 

 boatman's description of a pugnacious friend: "De trouble is, 

 he am too brave!" A rogue elephant will attack anything from 

 a wheelbarrow to a hut, and destroy it. The peak of rogue 

 ambition was reached on a railway in Burma, near Ban Klap, 

 in March 1908, when a rogue elephant "on hearing the loco- 

 motive whistle, trumpeted loudly and then, lowering his head, 

 charged the oncoming train. The impact was tremendous. 

 Such was the impetus of the great pachyderm that the engine 

 was partially derailed, the front of the smoke-box shattered 

 as far as the tubes, the cow-catcher was crushed into a shapeless 

 piece of iron, and other damages of minor importance were 

 sustained. The train was going thirty-four miles per hour. 

 and the engine alone weighed between forty and fifty tons. 



"Of course the elephant was killed by the shock, its head 

 being completely smashed. . . . It is believed that this par- 

 ticular rogue had been responsible for considerable damage to 

 villages in the vicinity of Lopbusi. A number of houses have 

 been pulled down recently and havoc wrought in other ways." 



On another occasion a vicious rogue elephant elected to try 



