ELEPHANT HUNTING, ETC. 217 



the-way part of Siam. To escape for even a few hours from 

 the deadly monotony and loneHness, they determined to 

 strike out over the open country so as to reach a small 

 town about twenty miles away which offered some little 

 chance of diversion. After a long and fatiguing tramp 

 they came to a village where by the offer of an exorbitant 

 price they were able to hire a bullock cart to bear them to 

 their destination. One circumstance which made the vil- 

 lagers especially loath to let out a cart was the fact that a 

 rogue elephant was known to be roaming about that part 

 of the district. The Englishmen started on their way and 

 were having a fairly comfortable time, dozing off in spite 

 of the jolting on the plank bottom of the cart, when sud- 

 denly they were hurled out and precipitated into a ditch 

 as though by an earthquake shock. Picking themselves 

 up, more startled than hurt, they were horrified to see the 

 rogue elephant making toward the spot where they were. 

 To climb a tree and thus place themselves temporarily out 

 of harm's way was the work of a few minutes, but before 

 they had run down the road far enough to reach this refuge, 

 on turning around they could see the wild elephant smashing 

 their cart to splinters. This encounter happened in the 

 night time and the poor fellows did not venture to come 

 down from their perches until by daylight they could as- 

 sure themselves that the raging elephant had gone off.* 



The docility of the Siamese elephants is not always to 

 be depended upon, for several cases of apparently unpro- 

 voked ferocity are reported of them. During his long resi- 

 dence as Court Physician in Siam, Dr. Charles S. Braddock, 

 Jr., was on one occasion called in to attend a native who had 

 been fatally injured by an on-rushing elephant supposed to 

 have been domesticated. The animal, after throwing the 



*From Bangkok Pioneer, December 24, 1913; item signed Tok To; kindly communicated 

 by Dr. Charles R. Braddock, Jr. 



