THE SAVAGE WORLD. 
537 
natives thus carrying their spoils to market. The elephant is troubled with a 
highly emotional nature, and not unfrequently falls dead from excessive excite¬ 
ment. His memory is tenacious and he does not forget a kindness, even though 
he sometimes offsets it with recollection of subsequent ill-treatment. On more 
than one occasion a traveller who has cured the wounds of an elephant has 
been held in the liveliest remembrance and recognized affectionately after pro¬ 
longed absences. At times an elephant will escape and, joining a herd of wild 
ones, will become feral in its nature. And yet repeated experience has proved 
that it recognizes the 
voice of its former 
master, and speedily 
yields to the habit of 
obedient submission. 
Still the stories about 
tame elephants turn 
mostly upon their 
avenging slights and 
wrongs. On one occa¬ 
sion a human brute, 
after having fed an 
elephant in the men¬ 
agerie, suddenly stuck 
a large pin into its 
outstretched trunk. A 
year or two later the 
same person happened 
to revisit the menag¬ 
erie, and while wholly 
unsuspicious of any 
ill-will on the part of 
the elephant, was sur¬ 
prised by its seizing 
his new silk hat, tear¬ 
ing it to tatters, and 
throwing the pieces at 
him. A traveller tells 
of the pursuit of a 
small boat by an ele¬ 
phant whose dignity 
had been disturbed by 
the boatmen, and of 
the elephant being satisfied merely to pursue and constantly drench them 
with water for the distance of a mile or two. 
Though the elephant’s intelligence is limited in range, it is certainly very 
great in degree. His nature is extremely emotional, and manifests itself in a sense 
of humiliation, in admiration of its own cleverness, in affectionateness as well 
as in the most terrible anger and the most abject fear. With elephants and 
the rest of the animal kingdom it is unsafe to build upon experiences with a 
single individual. The individual elephant as well as the individual human 
AN EEEPHANT FIGHT. 
