WILD ELEPHANTS. 
67 
length we emerged upon a large vista of the wood, 
which was intersected by a piece of water of con- 
siderable extent, On the further side were several 
wild elephants, and among them two females with 
each a young one. As if conscious of the natural im- 
pediment to our near approach, they remained as 
perfectly indifferent as if they did not observe us. 
The males accompanied the females, as their natural 
protectors, and there appeared to be as perfect an 
understanding among them, as if their social habits 
were regulated by those moral restraints which 
laws were established to maintain among human 
communities. The female elephant has a remark- 
able peculiarity of conformation, common, I believe, 
to no other class of mammalia. The mammae or 
paps, instead of being situated where they are in all 
other gregarious, or at least in all ruminating and gra- 
minivorous animals, are placed just behind the fore- 
legs, and nothing can be conceived more amusing than 
the movements of the young one when drawing its 
natural sustenance from the huge mother. The ele- 
phant is in every respect a very extraordinary animal. 
Before we reached the cataracts we saw additional 
evidences of the havoc so frequently caused by these 
formidable creatures, who sometimes make a very 
destructive use of their liberty. For the last mile 
and a half we were obliged to follow the course of the 
nullah, in order to accomplish the object of our some- 
what adventurous journey, the jungle being here so 
thick that we found it utterly impossible to penetrate 
it ; and at length we had much arduous clambering 
over vast fragments of rock, which had been rent by 
