540 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
commences his march toward the fountain, which is probably 
from twelve to twenty miles distant. This he generally 
reaches between the hours of nine and midnight, when, 
having slaked his thirst and cooled his body by spouting 
large volumes of water over his back with his trunk, he 
resumes the path to his forest solitudes. Having reached a 
secluded spot, I have remarked that full-grown bulls lie down 
on their broadsides, about the hour of midnight, and sleep 
for a few hours. The spot which they usually select is an 
ant-hill, and they lie around it with their backs resting 
against it; these hills formed by the white ants, are from 
thirty to forty feet in diameter at their base. The mark 
of the under tusk is always deeply imprinted in the ground, 
proving that they lie upon their sides. I never remarked 
that females had thus lain down, and it is only in the more 
secluded districts that the bulls adopt this practice; for I 
observed that, in districts where the elephants were liable 
to frequent disturbance, they took repose standing on their 
legs beneath some shady tree. Having slept, they then 
proceed to feed extensively. Spreading out from one another, 
and proceeding in a zigzag course, they smash and destroy 
all the finest trees in the forest which happen to lie in their 
course. The number of goodly trees which a herd of bull 
elephants will thus destroy is utterly incredible. They are 
extremely capricious, and on coming to a group of five or six 
trees, they break down not unfrequently the whole of them, 
when, having perhaps tasted one or two small branches, they 
pass on and continue their wanton work of destruction. I 
have repeatedly ridden through forests where the trees thus 
broken lay so thick across one another that it was almost 
impossible to ride through the district, and it is in situations 
such as these that attacking the elephant is attended with 
most danger. During the night they will feed in open plains 
and thinly-wooded districts, but as day dawns they retire 
to the densest covers within reach, which nine times in ten 
