344 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



killed with a poisoned arrow. His companion was reported 

 to be still in the jungle, and I fooHshly went out to hunt 

 him in the heat of the day, ending in my being brought 

 fainting back to camp. When I reached Matin, I was 

 again very iU. It was far hotter than in Laafagarh, lying 

 as it does in a low valley surrounded by hills. B. did not 

 rejoin me for the next eight days, and I had a very dreary 

 time of it indeed. There was abundance of game about, 

 and several cow elephants drank daily at a pool not a mile 

 from camp. Shooting females, or anything but old males, 

 had been prohibited by the Government, as there was an 

 intention of establishing a khedda here to capture them 

 alive. But there was an old " rogue " about who had 

 killed several persons not long before, and I sent some 

 Bhumias out to search for him. The second night after my 

 arrival I was sleeping outside for coolness, when I was 

 rudely awakened, and sat up to listen to the crashing and 

 trumpeting of a herd of elephants on the slope of the hiU 

 above the village. All night long, till within a few hours 

 of daybreak, they kept on breaking the bamboos and crying 

 shrilly at intervals. Our tame elephants were very uneasy 

 the whole time; and I took the precaution of securing 

 them by additional ropes, and stationing people with spears 

 beside them to suppress any attempt at an emeute. In 

 the evening I went out to the place, and found the hill- 

 side completely levelled, bamboos torn down, crushed 

 between their teeth, and many of their young shoots eaten 

 away, and many trees of the Boswellia and other scantily 

 rooted species overthrown and stripped of the tender bark 

 of their top branches. The limit of their powers in over- 

 throwing trees appeared, however, to be confined to those 

 of not more than about eight inches in diameter, and my 

 experience with trained tame elephants leads to a similar 

 conclusion. Even these are not torn up by the roots, but 

 merely borne down by the appUcation of their full weight, 

 by means of the forehead and one foot, or, as the natives 

 here assured me, of the stern. The tales of some African 

 travellers of elephants employing large trees as projectiles 

 (one declares he saw two trees of eighteen inches diameter 

 torn up and hurled ten or twelve yards) must be utter 



