70 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
mighty sweep of its tail, it dashed five of its as- 
sailants to the earth. The sixth, who was near its 
head, maintained his position, and still kept his ter- 
rific adversary against the wall, adroitly avoiding the 
lashings of its ponderous tail, by stooping or dodging 
as circumstances required, until the animal, exhausted 
with pain and exertion, lay extended at full length 
upon the earth, almost motionless. By this time the 
five soldiers who had been struck down, having re- 
covered their feet, wounded the vanquished snake 
with the butt-end of their muskets upon the ex- 
tremity of the tail, where the inosculation of the ver- 
tebrae is less firm, thus disabling it so completely, 
that it was soon dispatched. It measured upwards 
of fifty feet in length, and was full three in cir- 
cumference. 
As I have been led, in the course of this chapter, 
to speak of elephants in their state of natural free- 
dom, I shall conclude it with an anecdote which at 
once exhibits their remarkable docility, sagacity, and 
self-denial, in a state of subjection to human domi- 
nation. Before we left Madras, my fellow-travellers 
and I were witnesses of the following singular cir- 
cumstance. 
A mahoot,* wishing to go to the bazaar to purchase 
something for domestic consumption, and unwilling to 
be encumbered with his infant child, which had lost 
its mother, delivered it into the custody of the elephant 
* A person who drives the elephant ; he always sits on the 
neck, and generally urges the animal forward by words of en- 
dearment, hut when it is refractory goads it with a short iron 
spike. 
