160 The Life of an Elephant 



well-to-do people, and this surmise was confirmed 

 by the discovery of two wells of large diameter 

 not very far apart, which had evidently been 

 filled in at a time when the inhabitants were 

 put to the sword and their dwellings destroyed. 

 One of these wells it was proposed to open 

 out for the supply of water to a new generation 

 of workers in the forest that now flourished on 

 what was once a more prosperous landscape. 

 Some forty feet from the surface and yet twenty 

 feet above water level lay the bones of a tiger 

 blackened with age ; the claws of both fore and 

 hind-feet were worn to stumps, and, looking up 

 towards the light, one could see the reason in 

 the masonry torn from the walls of the shaft, and 

 the deep indentations on every side of it. One 

 could measure the height to which the animal 

 had leapt in the first few hours before his 

 strength fell from him, and the ever-increasing 

 distance from freedom that marked his failing 

 vitality : the lowest marks were scarce three 

 feet from where the skeleton lay, and this long 

 drawn-out death took perhaps fifteen or twenty 

 days to complete. Below the remains of the 



