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 posing it to be the English equiva- where, it is obsolete at the present 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 Jaffnapatam 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 ca- 

 spelt elsewhere ronquedue. Wolf noes. — Travels in South Africa, 

 does not give "ronkedor" as a p. 231. 



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