300 HUNTING ADVENTURES. 



spouting large volumes of water over his back with nis trur.L, he 

 resumes the path to his forest solitudes. Having reached a 

 secluded spot, I have remarked that full-grown bulls lie down on 

 their broadsides, about the hour of midnight, and sleep for a few 

 hours. The spot which they usually select is an ant-hill, and 

 they lay around it with their backs resting against it; these hills, 

 formed by the white ants, are from thirty to forty feet in diameter 

 at their base. The mark of the under tusk is always deeply im- 

 printed in the ground, proving that they lie upon their sides. I 

 never remarked that females had thus lain down, and it is only in 

 the more secluded districts that the bulls adopt this practice ; for I 

 observed that, in districts where the elephants were liable to fre- 

 quent disturbance, they took repose standing on their legs beneath 

 some shady tree. Having slept, they then proceeded to feed ex- 

 tensively. Spreading out from one another, and proceeding in . 

 zigzag course, they smash and destroy all the finest trees in the 

 forest which happen to lie in their course. The number of goodly 

 trees which a herd of bull elephants will thus destroy is utterly 

 incredible. They are extremely capricious, and on coming to a 

 group of five or six trees, they break down not unfrequently the 

 whole of ^hem, when, having perhaps only tasted one or two 

 small branches, they pass on and continue their wanton work of 

 destruction. I have repeatedly ridden through forests where the 

 trees thus broken lay so thick across one another that it was 

 almost impossible to ride through the district, and it is in situations 

 such as these that attacking the elephant is attended with most 

 danger. During the night they will feed in open plains and 

 thinly-wooded districts, but as day dawns they retire to the 

 densest covers within reach, and which nine times in ten are com- 

 posed of the impracticable wait-a-bit thorns and hen) they remain 

 drawn up in a compact herd during the heat of the day. In re- 

 mote districts, however, and in cool weather, I have known herds 

 iO continue pasturing throughout the whole day. 



The pace of the elep 1 ant, when undisturbed, is a bold, free 

 sweeping step ; and a' his movements are attended with a peog 

 liar gentlenes? and g:ace 



