282 THE CAMEL 



faces of the men, and their remarks as they looked on 

 with watering mouths and overpowering envy, were 

 worthy- of a camp ballad by Eudyard Kipling, or a pic- 

 ture by Simpson. The other heavy battery, which had 

 the same number of elephants, lost four or five on the 

 same march. Elephants are inclined to be lazy, and 

 will not pull if they take it into their heads not to do so. 

 They are also uncommonly sharp, and possess a large 

 amount of reasoning power. I had frequent oppor- 

 tunities of judging on this march, but will quote only a 

 couple of instances to bear out my statement. 



' Sir-i-Bolan. Dec. 26, 1878. The elephants riled me 

 to-day. There were three of them in a gun, which any 

 one of them might have hauled by himself had he only 

 chosen to do so, but no coaxing or persuasion on the 

 part of the " mahout " [driver] would make them exert 

 themselves. They simply would not pull, whether it 

 was from stubbornness or laziness I can't quite make up 

 my mind, the latter I am inclined to think. I picked 

 up a pebble and threw it at the one nearest to me. He 

 felt it about as much as he would have a fly, but the 

 cunning old brute resented it, and turning his near eye 

 on me with a kind of roguish twinkle in it, and his 

 trunk at the same time, he singled me out from among 

 several men who were close to me, and soused me all 

 over with water about a gallon which he had in his 

 trunk/ 



Another instance of this sagacity occurred on the 

 first march out from Dadur, when the leading elephant 

 in one of the guns, while crossing the river, suddenly 

 stopped, and would not go on, in spite of several blows 

 which the driver gave him on the head, until he had 



