224 A STERN- CHASE. 



by sayiug it was clear the elephant had come to where I was to meet his 

 death. They all assented with nods and grunts to this predestinarian view, 

 and added in Canarese that it was evidently his " hanay hiirr^l' or the 

 " writing on his forehead " (his fate). 



We pushed rapidly along as the trail was comparatively fresh. At 

 places where the elephant had stopped to feed — in moving from one part of 

 the country to another elephants generally march pretty steadily, merely 

 grazing by the way — the Kurrabas immediately spread to find where he 

 had gone on again. This was much more exjjeditious than following each 

 footstep, as it may be necessary to do with only one or two trackers. A 

 low note, in imitation of the Indian wood-owl, a sound which would alarm 

 no animal that heard it, immediately announced the fact when a tracker 

 hit off the track, and we were seldom delayed from the direct line for more 

 than a minute or two. I was relieved at the commencement of the hunt 

 of the rifle I ordinarily carried by one of the Kurrabas, and I now took off 

 my coat, as the day was warm even in the shady forest, and we were fre- 

 quently running. The elephant had several hours' start of us, and waij 

 heading towards the Coorg jungles, where he would be beyond our reach. 

 Between 7 and 1 o'clock a.m. we must have gone twelve miles ; and 

 this exertion, despite the interest of the chase, was beginning to tell upon 

 me. There was a stream some little distance ahead, and we entertained 

 high hopes that the elephant might rest near it during the day. 



As we pushed quickly along like a pack of hounds down the finely- 

 wooded and gentle slope, at the foot of which the stream ran, we found the 

 elephant had begun to loiter and feed about, and finally, on the bank of the 

 stream, he had devoted at least two hours to demolishing a bamboo-clump, 

 the leaves and twigs of which form a principal part of the elephant's food. 

 The appearance of a bamboo-cover after a herd of elephants has fed in it is 

 remarkable. Eoughly speaking, there are two kinds or varieties of bamboos. 

 One description — the small bamboo — grows to about thirty feet in height, and 

 usually in small clumps, each bamboo about an inch and a half in diameter. 

 The large kind — the giant bamboo — grows in clumps sometimes twenty paces 

 in circumference, the individual stems in which are occasionally seven inches 

 in diameter. This bamboo is hollow, the wood being half an inch thick. 

 The elephants pull the bamboos down with their trunks, and holding the 

 stem under foot, strip off the young shoots and foliage. The stems are split 

 open by the pressure of their feet. The crackling and crashing noise made 

 by elephants feeding amongst bamboos is very great ; and they reduce the 

 clumps to such disarray, bending them at about ten feet from the ground, 

 but not detaching them, that it is difficult to move through the cover after 



