AN ELEPHANT STOEY 243 
rocky ground. As the heat of the day increases, he drinks 
at every stream ; drawing up the water in his trunk and then 
putting his long proboscis down his throat, he deposits the 
fluid in a bag near the stomach, which it takes ten minutes 
to fill. When this natural water bottle is replenished, the 
elephant walks on, — every quarter of an hour or thereabouts, 
poking his trunk down his throat, drawing it out and squirting 
its contents all over his body to cool himself, for the hot sun 
beats strongly on his black carcase. Of course I come in 
for an ample share of his shower-bath, which, as it sprinkles 
my spectacles, is not desirable. So much for the elephant's 
fashion of cooling himself by day, and he is not a whit less 
clever at expedients for retaining his warmth during the 
' chill dewy night ' : he scrapes up, with this view, all the dust 
he can collect with his foot and trunk, and aided by the 
curious crozier-like coil at the end of the latter, he dexterously 
jerks the earth all over himself, so preventing the evaporation 
from his skin which would make him too cold at night . When 
crossing rivers, he pulls some carts across and pushes others 
through the deep sand with his broad forehead. After one 
morning's w^ork my poor beast had a lump on his brow, as large 
as a child's head, raw and bloody at top ; but all of us had to 
work so hard that we could- not excuse him, and it was 
touching to see the docile creature lay his expansive brow 
obhquely to the back of the waggon, first by one temple 
then by the other, stoop and try with his soft trunk to move 
the load and avoid the sore place — till, finding all was useless, 
he gallantly planted the sore bump, and with a short cry of 
pain, he thiust on, and persevered till all the waggons were 
fairly over, though aware that every time he lifted his head 
and set it to the work again, the same suffering must be 
endured. So, when he has to remove a thorny tree from the 
path, if he cannot find a smooth part of the trunk, he boldly 
grasps it, thorns and all, tears it up and lays it on one side. 
If I drop anything, hat or book, he picks it up with his trunk 
and adroitly tosses it over his head into my lap. ^ The other 
day I went to a fair, in the heart of a remote district, and dis- 
mounting, went through the whole show. It was just hke 
Glasgow or Greenwich Fair, except that, as in all Eastern 
and some Western countries, the trades were drawn together 
in lines. There were children, with trumpets and squeaks, 
merry-go-rounds and rocking-chairs. The little girls were 
