CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 69 



sight. I once saw an elephant in Canada 

 engaged in intercepting the logs and trunks of 

 trees that were floating down a river and stack- 

 ing them on the bank. The precision with 

 which the logs were laid, and the ingenuity 

 with which, as the stack rose in elevation, logs 

 were rolled up an incline made by the elephant 

 for the purpose, were remarkable. But the 

 feat that astounded me most was when the ele- 

 phant, while dragging a tree out of the swift 

 stream in his trunk, suddenly observed another 

 log coming downstream so rapidly that it must 

 inevitably have swung out of reach before he 

 had time to deposit his burden on the bank. 

 In an instant the animal pushed the descending 

 log, with his foot out of the rapid current, 

 slightly upstream, and so into the slack water 

 under the bank ; after which, quickly depositing 

 the tree on land, he caught up the log with his 

 free trunk before it could sweep past him. 



"It seems, however, that there are times, par- 

 ticularly when they have done wrong and are 

 ashamed of themselves, when elephants lose 

 their heads. A mahout, passing through 

 Sangli in 1886, went into a cottage and set 

 a child in his own place on the elephant's neck. 

 The elephant resented this pleasantry, killed 

 the child, and made off. The villagers raised 

 a hue-and-cry just as I happened to be riding 

 through the place, and some police with fixed 

 bayonets were hastily collected and marched 

 with slow and regular step to where the animal 

 stood. The elephant backed slowly until it 

 reached the stump of a tree, where heel-chains 



