2 The Life of an Klephant 



symbol of a demon or god, unknown perhaps to 

 the outside world, but appealing to the hearts of 

 the jungle folk, who, suffering patiently as the 

 animals suffer, like them also blindly sought 

 relief. That rugged track, which led from the 

 hill-top into the depth of the forest below, had 

 been marked out by the feet of the votaries of 

 the shrine, who each, as he left after suppli- 

 cation, cast a stone on the slowly growing- 

 mounds at the entrance to the grove. 



From the hill-top the forest spread on all 

 sides as far as the eye could reach, and it lost 

 itself in the distant horizon where the purple 

 outline of the hills faded into the azure of the 

 evening sky. There was wave upon wave 

 of hills covered with trees, so that the earth 

 lay hidden, and down in the valleys one saw 

 nothing but the crowns of trees forming an 

 impenetrable carpet of foliage ; only along the 

 ridges the light filtered in vertical streaks 

 through the closed-up ranks of tree trunks. If 

 there were villages they were hidden in masses 

 of trees ; the forest engulfed them and reigned 

 supreme in this lonely corner of the earth. 



