THE INDIAN^ ELEPHANT. 231 



difficulty to overcome. In the Sungam timber depot, all the work 

 of piling and arranging the logs in regular order, at equal distances 

 apart, with the right side uppermost, was performed by elephants, 

 under the direction of their mahouts. A word of command, a silent 

 touch of the hand or knee was enough. There was no loud bawling 

 nor angry swearing at the laborers, such as would have been abso- 

 lutely necessary had they been Barbadoes or Demerara negroes, nor 

 was there any insulting back-talk or insubordination, such as those 

 abominable scallawags are wont to indulge in. In fact, the elephants 

 worked like intelligent human beings of the better sort. 



The elephants of the Foi*est Department were every night al- 

 lowed to run loose in the jungle around the camp to feed upon the 

 succvdent bamboo shoots and grass, by which they secured their 

 own green fodder, and rendered the services of the usual grass-cut- 

 ters unnecessary. Every morning they were hunted up and 

 brought in by their mahouts and taken to the stream to bathe. 

 They were made to lie down where the water was deepest and en- 

 joy a full bath and good washing, after which they were ready for 

 breakfast. Another attendant always remained in camp to prepare 

 the cooked food for the herd. The daily allowance of rice for each 

 elephant was one maund, or twenty-four pounds. The entire daily 

 allowance was cooked at once in a huge copper kettle, and when 

 thoroughly boiled, each elephant's share was made up into four or 

 five balls the size of a man's head, and the whole breakfast was laid 

 out on a mat spread near the kettle. The seven or eight elephants 

 then marched up and took their places around the mat facing in- 

 ward, two on each side, and with the utmost gravity and perfection 

 of " table-manners," stood still to be waited upon in turn. One by 

 one, the cook lifted the balls of rice and placed them carefully in 

 the mouths of the elephants, who always gracefully elevated their 

 trunks while receiving them, and remained quietly until the meal 

 was finished. I often assisted in this interesting performance, and 

 the huge animals never showed me the least incivility. 



"When a mahout wishes to mount his elephant, he gives a word 

 of command, at which the animal hf ts one of his fore-feet and bends 

 it upward, the bare-footed driver steps upon it nimbly, seizes the 

 elephant by the ear and scrambles up the foreleg to his place. On 

 account of my thick-soled shoes, I could not swarm up an elephant's 

 leg in that way, and being without a ladder the elephants always 

 knelt to enable me to reach the riding pad. 



Except in forests like the Animallais, where there are no culti- 



