WILD ELEPHANTS. 
65 
or following our more alert guides the peons, who 
made the passage clear before us with their tulwars 
and spears. 
Before we entered the last deep recess of the 
wood, we crossed several fields where it was evident 
that sugar-canes had lately grown, but which, on 
the evening preceding, as we afterwards ascertained, 
had been entirely destroyed by the wild elephants. 
These animals frequently commit the most frightful 
depredations upon the cultivated spots that skirt the 
forests. They prostrate every thing before them, so 
that a whole field of sugar-cane is often entirely laid 
waste by them in the course of a few hours. A 
man and his wife, who had been stationed in a hut 
to look after the plantation through which we passed, 
and to frighten off any of the forest ravagers that 
might appear to carry on their work of destruction, 
had been compelled to mount upon the upper branches 
of a large tree as the only place of security ; for their 
enemies were not only many, but terrible also in 
their might and energy. Here the watchers remained 
all the time that the work of devastation was going 
on, which they distinctly saw, for there was a clear 
moonlight, without the slightest power of interrupting 
it. As soon as the plantation had been entirely laid 
waste, the elephants retired, when the terrified couple, 
who had been so long lodged in the branches of a 
teak-tree, descended from their painful elevation to 
communicate the unwelcome intelligence to the landed 
proprietor. 
This herd of quadruped giants was only at a short 
distance from us as we were making our way through 
g 3 
