192 BOGGED IN A " FUSS AND." 



a runaway brute of this sort. Fortunately I was not in the 

 howdah at the time. 



A source of constant danger with us on this trip was a 

 vicious " mukna " (tuskless male) elephant. The brute had 

 already killed two men, and nobody but his mahout dared 

 approach him. Whenever any of us had occasion to dismount 

 from our elephants, the first question was always as to the 

 whereabouts in the line of Moula Buksh, as our dangerous 

 friend was named. 



Getting badly bogged in a " fussand," as the natives call a 

 quaking morass, ranks about next in order. And an incident 

 that occurred in this day's beat will serve to show what it 

 means. 



We had been beating slowly and with difficulty through 

 the patches of bent jungle, and plying the more inaccessible 

 spots with andrs, without having seen a sign of a striped 

 jacket, when, on reaching a more than usually swampy place, 

 Golab Soondrie (Anglic^, Beautiful Eose), the steady old 

 elephant I was on, showed a decided disinclination to enter- 

 ing it. Not wishing to leave my place in the line, I made 

 the mahout urge her forward, and she had not taken more 

 than a few steps when she was floundering about up to her 

 middle in thick black mud and water. The old lady finding 

 she had got fairly into it, continued to struggle bravely on 

 towards some firmer-looking ground a short distance in front. 

 But ere reaching this her body was almost entirely submerged 

 in the foul inky fluid, in which she rolled about like a dis- 

 masted ship in a heavy sea. It was impossible to leave the 

 howdah on account of the depth of water ; and in such cases, 

 even when the ground is stable enough to admit of dismount- 

 ing, it has to be done with caution : for an elephant, on 

 finding itself in a fix of this kind, is said to be apt to lay hold 

 with its trunk of anything within reach, without respect even 

 to persons, to place under its feet for support. And the usual 

 method adopted, when everything else fails, for extricating an 



