250 THE FORESTS OF UPPER INDIA 



would express her disapproval by tapping on the ground 

 and trumpeting. Old Koda Bux, the mahout, was very 

 attentive to his charge in the matter of medicine {dawai) 

 for its poor feet, consisting of a bottle of arrack, or, better 

 still, ' brandy sharab ' and a small bit of opium got by 

 the sahib's orders in the nearest bazaar. Luckmee's feet 

 often got sore and cracked, and these remedies were quite 

 unfailing in their effect, but not on the hati's feet. Most 

 elephants are good-natured, and will not use their strength 

 to hurt even small children, which are safely left in their 

 charge. A few are really dangerous and spiteful. There 

 was one in our line of pad elephants, which everyone was 

 warned not to go near. He had a very deaf mahout, 

 whom he obeyed. One day, when all the line of elephants 

 had come to a river and were drinking and splashing their 

 sides with deluges of cooling water, the old deaf mahout 

 got down to drink at the water's edge. This ' budmash ' 

 elephant began to think it a fine chance to go for a solitary 

 chaprasi who was sitting on his back. Quietly feeling 

 back over the pad with his trunk for the wretched man, 

 who climbed back as far out of its reach as he could get, 

 the brute then gave a vicious shake of his hind quarters 

 to try and dislodge the man, who shouted to the mahout 

 to save him. This went on several times before the deaf 

 man could be made to hear, and he was only just in time 

 to prevent the chaprasi from being seized and trampled 

 to death. 



As an instance of the extraordinary instinct of ele- 

 phants may be mentioned a striking case of their power 

 of finding their way, by tapping or feeling the path with 

 the trunk, and recognising any path they have previously 

 traversed. On one occasion we crossed a very wide 

 river on going out in the morning to beat the jungle at 

 the other side. There was a wide expanse of sand and 



