Chap. III.] 
THE ELEPHANT. 
115 
their vicious propensities and predatory habits are called 
Hora, or Rogues, in Ceylon. 1 
It is believed by the Singhalese that these are either 
individuals, who by accident have lost their former 
associates and become morose and savage from rage and 
solitude; or else that being naturally vicious they have 
become daring from the yielding habits of their milder 
companions, and eventually separated themselves from 
the rest of the herd which had refused to associate with 
them. Another conjecture is, that being almost uni- 
versally males, the death or capture of particular females 
may have detached them from their former companions 
in search of fresh alliances. 2 It is also believed that a 
tame elephant escaping from captivity, unable to rejoin 
its former herd, and excluded from any other, becomes 
a "rogue" from necessity. In Ceylon it is generally 
believed that the rogues are all males (but of this I am 
not certain), and so sullen is their disposition that 
1 The term " rogue " is scarcely term peculiar to that section of the 
sufficiently accounted for by sup- island; but both there and else- 
posing it to be the English equiya- where, it is obsolete at the present 
lent for the Singhalese word Hora. day, unless it be open to conjecture 
In that very curious book, the that the modern term "rogue" is a 
Life and Adventures of John modification of ronquedue. 
Christopher Wolf, late princi- 2 Buchanan, in his Survey of 
pal Secretary at Jaffnapat'am in Bhagulpore, p. 503, says that soli- 
Ceylon, the author says, when a tary males of the wild buffalo, 
male elephant in a quarrel about "when driven from the herd by 
the females "is beat out of the stronger competitors for female 
field and obliged to go without a society, are reckoned very dangerous 
consort, he becomes furious and to meet with ; for they are apt to 
mad, killing every living creature, wreak their vengeance on what- 
be it man or beast: and in this ever they meet, and are said to 
state is called ronkedor, an object kill annually three or four people." 
of greater terror to a traveller than Livingstone relates the same of 
a hundred wild ones." — P. 142. the solitary hippopotamus, which 
In another passage, p. 164, he is becomes soured in temper, and 
called runkedor, and I have seen it wantonly attacks the passing ea- 
spelt elsewhere ronquedue. Wolf noes. — Travels in South Africa, 
does not give "ronJcedor" as a p. 231. 
I 2 
