144 ^/^^ Poets Beasts. 



This intelligence makes the' giant a very valuable ally of 

 man ; for once it recognises that its driver is a careful and 

 trustworthy person, it abandons its natural timidity and 

 develops an extraordinary sense of discipline. But if the 

 driver is changed, the next man has to satisfy the elephant 

 as to his moral character and personal reliability ab initio. 

 Elephants take nothing on trust — except the pitfalls with 

 which Thomson's Asiatics and Somerville's Africans " mine 

 with cruel avarice his steps." 



" And now the treach'rous turf 

 Trembling gives way, and tlie unwieldy beast, 

 Self-sinking, drops into the gulf profound." 



This splendid beast is one of the few indisputable relics 

 of the epoch of giants, the last survivor of the mastodons 

 and mammoths that the sons of Noah hunted. In Jean 

 Ingelow's poem, the wife of " the world's great shipwright " 

 has allowed the lads, our progenitors, to go out mammoth- 

 hunting, and is anxious about them — 



*' For they are young. Their slaves are few, 

 The giant elephants be cunning folk ; 

 They lie in ambush, and will draw men on 

 To follow — then will turn and tread them down." 



And I think, too, there is something very striking in the 

 fact of the elephant being gregarious in death. They lay 

 their bones in the vaults of their ancestors, and socially 

 defer to the solemnity of the rites of sepulture. 



In eastern warfare it is still to this day as conspicuous 

 as when (in Somcrville) — 



" High upon his throne, 

 Borne on the back of his proud elephant, 

 Sate the great cliief of Timur's glorious race ; 

 Sublime he sate amid the radiant blaze 

 Of gems and gold ;" 



for the elephant can carry loads over places impracticable 



