A DEAD ELEPHANT. 
81 
which gave a solemn but relieved interest to the 
natural gloom of the picture. Near the head of the 
lake was the carcass of a dead elephant, upon which 
a large alligator was making his meal, while others 
of less magnitude were eagerly awaiting his departure 
that they might succeed him, when he should have 
received his sufficiency, and likewise enjoy the luxury 
of a feast. The natural solitariness and asperity of 
the spot, the immobility and murkiness of the lake, 
the extreme denseness of the foliage, together with the 
1 almost cavernous gloom which such a concurrence of 
causes produced, were seen in awful contrast with 
the several varieties of living objects that met the 
sight upon entering this sequestered glade. There 
was indeed a stirring activity in the very haunt of 
solitude ; and what is strange, the feeling of intense 
solitariness was only the more strongly awakened by 
the presence of this activity, as the mind instantly 
felt that it could only be witnessed far from the 
abodes of men. The mental associations excited by 
the scene before us were any thing but pleasing, as we 
here read in one of Nature's most melancholy pages 
the sad lesson of animal selfishness and ferocity. How 
does the former run through all the countless grada- 
tions of human feeling ! In the rational creature it 
is the master-spring of motives, intents, and actions, 
and exists as strongly as in the irrational ; in the 
latter, it is only the more obvious, because it is the 
less disguised. These reflections passed rapidly 
through my thoughts as I gazed upon the living 
things which swarmed in and about the dark lake 
on whose banks the elephant had breathed his last. 
