Chap. III.] THE ELEPHANT. 



139 



wait for travellers. In a moment lie rushed forward to 

 the road, trumpeting dreadfully, and seized my companion. I, 

 who happened to be in the rear, took to flight, pursued by 

 the elephant, which had already killed my companion by 

 striking him against the ground. I had not moved more than 

 seven or eight fathoms, when the elephant seized me, and threw 

 me up with such force, that I was carried high into the air 

 towards a Cahata tree, whose branches caught me and pre- 

 vented my falling to the ground. By this I received no other 

 injury than the dislocation of one of my wrists. I do not know 

 whether the elephant saw me after he had hurled me away 

 through the air ; but certainly he did not come to the 

 tree to which I was then clinging : even if he had come, he 

 couldn't have done me any more harm, as the branch on 

 which I was was far beyond the reach of his trunk, and the 

 tree itself too large for him to pull down. The next thing 

 I saw was the elephant returning to the corpse of my com- 

 panion, which he again threw on the ground, and placing one 

 of his fore feet on it, he tore it with his trunk limb after limb ; 

 and dabbled in the blood that flowed from the shapeless mass 

 of flesh which he was still holding under his foot." 



3. "In 1847 or '46," said another informant, "I was a 

 superintendent of a coco-nut estate belonging to Mr. Armitage, 

 situated about twelve miles from Negombo. A rogue elephant 

 did considerable injury to the estate at that time; and one day? 

 hearing that it was then on the plantation, a Mr. Lindsay, an 

 Englishman, who was proprietor of the adjoining property, and 

 myself, accompanied by some seven or eight people of the 

 neighbouring village, went out, carrying with us six rifles 

 loaded and primed. "We continued to walk along a path which, 

 near one of its turns, had some bushes on one side. We had 

 calculated to come up with the brute where it had been seen 

 half an hour before ; but no sooner had one of our men, 

 who was walking foremost, seen 'the animal at the distance 

 of some fifteen or twenty fathoms, than he exclaimed, 

 4 There ! there !' and immediately took to his heels, and we all 



