AN ELEPHANT STORY 243 



rocky ground. As the heat of the day increases, he drinks 

 at every stream ; drawing up the water in his trunk and then 

 putting his long proboscis down his throat, he deposits the 

 fluid in a bag near the stomach, which it takes ten minutes 

 to fill. When this natural water bottle is replenished, the 

 'elephant walks on, — every quarter of an hour or thereabouts, 

 poking his trunk down his throat, drawing it out and squirting 

 its contents all over his body to cool himself, for the hot sun 

 beats strongly on his black carcase. Of course I come in 

 for an ample share of his shower-bath, which, as it sprinkles 

 my spectacles, is not desirable. So much for the elephant's 

 fashion of cooling himself by day, and he is not a whit less 

 clever at expedients for retaining his warmth during the 

 ' chill dewy night ' : he scrapes up, with this view, all the dust 

 he can collect with his foot and trunk, and aided by the 

 curious crozier-like coil at the end of the latter, he dexterously 

 jerks the earth all over himself, so preventing the evaporation 

 from his skin which would make him too cold at night. When 

 crossing rivers, he pulls some carts across and pushes others 

 through the deep sand with his broad forehead. After one 

 morning's work my poor beast had a lump on his brow, as large 

 as a child's head, raw and bloody at top ; but all of us had to 

 work so hard that we could not excuse him, and it was 

 touching to see the docile creature lay his expansive brow 

 obliquely to the back of the waggon, first by one temple 

 then by the other, stoop and try with his soft trunk to move 

 the load and avoid the sore place — till, finding all was useless, 

 he gallantly planted the sore bump, and with a short cry of 

 pain, he thrust on, and persevered till all the waggons were 

 fairly over, though aware that every time he lifted his head 

 and set it to the work again, the same suffering must be 

 endured. So, when he has to remove a thorny tree from the 

 path, if he cannot find a smooth part of the trunk, he boldly 

 grasps it, thorns and all, tears it up and lays it on one side. 

 If I drop anything, hat or book, he picks it up with his trunk 

 and adroitly tosses it over his head into my lap. The other 

 day I went to a fair, in the heart of a remote district, and dis- 

 mounting, went through the whole show, it was just Hke 

 Glasgow or Greenwich Fair, except that, as in all Eastern 

 and some Western countries, the trades were drawn together 

 in lines. There were children, with trumpets and squeaks, 

 merry-go-rounds and rocking-chairs. The little girls were 



