SKELETONIZING AN ELEPHANT. 165 



tired out, and having made an excellent beginning, we left off work, 

 went down to the Httle creek and bathed, after which I again served 

 out arrack all around to the men and finished a quart of Bass' ale on 

 my own account. With our tracking, marching to and fro, and work 

 on the elephant, we had had a hard day of it ; but the Mulcers had 

 grown quite plump and vigorous on a two months' diet of game, I 

 had been free fi'om fever for nearly two weeks, and Httle cai-ed we 

 for any amount of hard woi-k which did not quite kill us. 



At sunrise the next morning we were again at our task, and after 

 cutting the flesh from the entire upper side of the body, cutting 

 off the head and as much as possible of the lower legs, we pi'ocured 

 levers and, by dint of great exertion and no small amount of en- 

 gineering, turned the cai'cass ovei*. After the gTeater portion of 

 the flesh had been removed, we cut out the sternum in one piece, 

 cut out the ribs one by one, divided the massive spinal column into 

 four sections, and cut each leg in two at ankle and knee. Then all 

 the parts of the skeleton were cleaned neatly and carefully, one by 

 one. The skin of each foot I saved to mount as a footstool, and 

 the tail also was kept as a trophy. 



By 4 P.M., after about sixteen houi's' hard work, my five Mulcers 

 and I had cut out all the bones of the skeleton, cleaned them neatly, 

 painted them over with strong arsenical soap and tied them up 

 into bundles suitable for carrying. Being anxious to leave that 

 neighborhood as soon as possible, we carried all the bones about 

 three hundred yards and hid them away amongst some large rocks, 

 after which we spent an hour in making that spot look like a dense 

 thicket. "We cut green boughs and stuck them up in the heap of 

 bones, and in the clefts of the rocks all around it, making young 

 trees gi-ow up and green branches droop over with a naturalness 

 that was quite artistic. A stranger might have passed within twenty 

 yards of the cache without even suspecting its presence. 



But at the scene of action there was about an acre of meat, 

 pieces of skin, blood, brains, and viscera which showed unmistak- 

 ably that some great animal had been wrecked. That we could not 

 hide, and one of my men, the peon who administered the oath to 

 the Mulcers, proposed that we get several pairs of bison horns and 

 throw them down there, along with a few bones, to mislead any of 

 the Cochin people who might happen to pass that way. It was a 

 good suggestion, but I thought we could risk the matter as it was. 

 Then we " folded our tent Hke the Arabs and as silently stole away," 

 first obliterating all traces of oui- camp, and marched boldly down 



