234 Trt'O YEAES IN THE JUNGLE. 



Occasionally a solitary elephant, in nearly every case a male, 

 takes to tearing down huts, maliciously destroying crops and kill- 

 ing peoj)le, by which he speedily earns for himself the title of " a 

 rogue." Judging from what I have heard about such individuals, 

 I believe it could be proven that no elephant becomes a rogue un- 

 less he is suflfering from some acute ailment, or else a fit of "must." 

 A sportsman once showed me a tusk he had extracted from a famous 

 rogue, the condition of which afforded a ready explanation of the 

 animal's vicious temper. At some late period of his life a heavy 

 ball had been fired into the base of his right tusk, shattering the 

 ivory, splitting the tusk and driving sharp splinters of it into the 

 medullary pulp. The pain must have been excruciating, and yet, 

 like human toothache, it could not kill. 



An angry elephant usually kills a man by treading or kneeling 

 upon his body, and crushing it to a jelly. Occasionally, however, 

 the victim is subjected to still more terrible torture, as the follow- 

 ing passage from Mr. Sanderson's work will show : 



" He (the Kakankote rogue) had now returned, evidently not im- 

 proved in temper, and had marked his arrival by killing a Kurraba, 

 a relative of one of the trackers I had with me on oui* late expedi- 

 tion. The Kurraba was surprised while digging roots in the jungle, 

 but would probably not have been caught had he been alone. Two 

 youthful aborigines were with him, and it was after putting them 

 up a tree, and attempting to follow, that he was pulled down and 

 torn limb from limb by the elephant. The Kurrabas who found 

 the body, said that the elephant had held the unfortunate man 

 down with one fore-foot, whilst with his trunk he tore legs and arms 

 from their sockets, and jerked them to some distance." 



This was the third man killed by the Kakankote rogue, who was 

 himself speedily hunted down and killed by Mi". Sanderson. 



One of the strangest features of the elephant is its swimming 

 power. With a colossal body and legs, and with feet almost Avholly 

 unadapted to making progress through the water, the elephant 

 swims better than any other terrestrial quadruped. Upon this 

 point, Mr. Sanderson writes as follows : 



" A batch of seventy-nine (elephants) that I despatched from 

 Dacca to Barrackpur, near Calcutta, had the Ganges and several of 

 its large tidal branches to cross. In the longest swim they were six 

 hours without touching the bottom ; after a rest on a sand-bank, 

 they completed the swim in three more. Not one was lost. I have 

 heard of even more remarkable swims than this." 



