190 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



outbreak of smallpox. All of these things were alike 

 in this respect, that of none of them could the occur- 

 rence be prevented by any human power, and that fore- 

 thought was therefore merely an unnecessary and un- 

 intelligent anticipation of a possible future evil. A 

 calm acceptance of the fate that placed him within the 

 area influenced by the elephant thus gave a curiously 

 impersonal tone to the manner in which Brahim 

 thought and spoke of it. He told us that the elephant 

 had fed the night before in an abandoned clearing 

 about a mile farther up the river, and that he expected 

 it to invade his plantation this night or the next, but 

 talked in a voice so unconcerned that one could hardly 

 realise that he was speaking of the imminent depreda- 

 tion of what was practically the only property that he 

 had in the world. I was struck, too, by the way in 

 which he appeared to regard the elephant as a tool 

 in the hand of some maleficent demon rather than as 

 a voluntary harm-doer, or as a manifestation of evil 

 rather than as the evil itself. Against the elephant 

 itself, therefore, he appeared to have no ill-feeling. 

 He seemed not to have the inclination, which would 

 have been natural to many people, to curse it. He 

 did not even call it a beast, or a brute. He only 

 spoke of "it." This did not, of course, in any way 

 prevent him from having a hearty desire to see it 

 killed. 



He told us that he had vowed to slay a goat when 

 the elephant was killed, and mentioned the names of 

 some of the richer Malays in the Blat district, each of 

 whom had vowed to slaughter a buffalo upon the same 

 auspicious occasion. Almost every man in the water- 



