554 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Nov. 2, 1912 
crossed and ran along it, there was nothing to 
show a regular path that would be worth 
watching, and presently my attention was dis¬ 
tracted by a peculiar steady rustling among 
the bamboos on the bank a little to our left 
front. Moung Gyee, who always kept very 
close behind me when marks, old or new. of 
dangerous game were visible, whispered to stop 
and listen, pointing to the disturbance in the 
bamboo tops. The feathery crests were quiver¬ 
ing, bending and jerking; now a taller crown 
was seized with an attack of shivers, which 
suddenly ended in a sharp sweep downward, in 
response from a pull from below, to whip up 
again, while a neighbor went through the same 
performance. Now and again.I caught through 
the foliage a glimpse of a black something, 
which turned and twisted and writhed. 
The first time I saw this mysterious “troub¬ 
ling of treetops,” I supposed it was caused by 
monkeys, and thought to give the animals a 
surprise. The surprise was chiefly on my side; 
I had stolen very close when the rustling sud¬ 
denly ceased, a dozen of smithy bellows heaved 
blasting sighs, and the bamboos crashed before 
elephants in full retreat, like dogs through 
grain. 
Now, as we stood watching, came the sounds 
that betray; the thrash, thrash, thrash of an 
elephant bruising a trunkful of tough shoots 
across his knee, and that sigh like the birth of 
the north wind in the cave of Boreas. We 
moved forward cautiously, hoping to get a 
sight of them, but had no chance on that open 
sand; the rustling in the bamboo tops ceased, 
and we heard the beasts brushing their way 
along some open track. 
Elephants are numerous in these hills, but it 
is hardly necessary to say are strictly pre¬ 
served. You can get leave to shoot one from 
the deputy commissioner, or, if desired, any 
village headman will swear away the character 
of any elephant for 5 rupees, to the end that 
you may shoot him for a rogue—or vagabond 
rather—whose death no 500 rupees fine will 
avenge. I have often been urged to go and 
slay an elephant chance had sent in the way, 
the men vowing that they knew his spoor for 
that of a paddy-thief, who ate acres of grain 
in a single night in the kwins five days’ march 
away. They would observe, parenthetically, 
that “elephant flesh is very good to eat.” 
The elephants gone, we strolled up to the 
choung with eyes well open; one of the prettiest 
sights I ever saw was in such a place as this— 
a narrow stream between wide sand margains 
winding between steep jungle-clad hill. We 
were walking in the face of a light evening 
wind, looking for jungle fowl or what the gods 
might send to fill an empty pot, when the man 
who was leading suddenly collapsed in the act 
of turning a corner round some great boulders 
and folded himself up in a hole, imploring cau¬ 
tion with both hands. My rifle was ready, but 
apart from fines, it was not a case for using it. 
Peeping cautiously through a crack between 
the rocks, I saw how nearly we had disturbed 
a little nursery comedy. Not seventy yards 
away, standing out clearly against the sand, was 
a cow elephant with a young one at the margin 
of the water. The calf was the merest baby, 
not, at a guess, over ten hands high: his mother 
had apparently brought him to have a tub, and 
he would not get in. I made myself comfort¬ 
able .and watched them. First the mother took 
a step or two into the shallow, swished about 
her trunk and blew water over her own head; 
a little besprinkled her child, who shook his 
ears impatiently. She backed slowly out of the 
water, when he promptly charged under her to 
suckle; she pushed him away and caressed him, 
as it appeared, with her trunk, but he began 
to scream like a pig, turning his little round 
stern resolutely upon the water. When he did 
this his patient mother took sand in her trunk 
and blew it over herself and him; he seemed to 
enjoy this. I suppose the sand blast agreeably 
tickled his hide, and she did it again. Then, 
after swinging her trunk and tail idly for half 
a minute, she put her arm—I should say trunk 
—round the butcha, and blew sand against his 
belly, which obviously pleased him. Having 
thus got him into a good temper, she took a 
short slow step waterward. with her trunk still 
about him; but the moment the peevish little 
beast felt the gentle force, he burst out in such 
a pitiful scream that she gave in and stopped. 
I was wondering why she did not squirt water 
over him if he needed a bath, and was drawing 
some vague comparisons between the intelli¬ 
gence of the unlettered jungle elephant and that 
of the highly educated graduate of the timber 
yards, when something in the jungle opposite 
alarmed the cow. She threw out her ears, and 
her restless tail became still. I could hear 
nothing, but after standing statue-like for ten 
seconds, she wheeled nimbly about, and rolled 
swiftly up the jungle with the calf close under 
her flank. Query for the philosophic natural¬ 
ist: Did the mother cease urging her child to 
bathe because his squeals might, as they prob¬ 
ably did, attract a foe, or was it foolish maternal 
indulgence? 
The elephant receives more praise than he 
deserves for his cleanly instincts. He does 
enjoy a bath after a long day’s work, but like 
the other pachyderms, he is very partial to 
wallowing in mud. I came across a sin-low, or 
elephant wallow, once up in these hills; it was 
an oval basin about ten feet in longest diameter, 
which had been scraped and rubbed into the 
face of a steep bank. I did not try what the 
depth of the mud might be, for the path which 
led to it was wet and slippery, and my nose 
urged abstention from risk of personal experi¬ 
ment. The smell was awful, for the wallow had 
been so recently used that wet blots of mud 
nearly covered the track. It was tolerably deep, 
as the earth a few inches above the level of 
the mud was pierced and marked by tusks. The 
men declared that the elephant used their tusks 
to break soil into the wallow when the mud 
became unduly thin; but the character of the 
holes and scars suggested that wallowers were 
in the habit of using their tusks as alpenstocks 
to aid them in clambering out. An elephant 
is a wonderful climber as we all know, but the 
paths on either side of this wallow were on an 
angle calculated to tax the most agile of the 
species. This mud path obviously owed its 
beginning to an abrupt dip in the path which 
ran along the face of the slope. The mud ac¬ 
cumulating there in rainy season had been 
gradually churned deeper, and in no very long 
time came to be used as a regular wallow. 
We turned back soon after disturbing the ele¬ 
phants among the bamboos and turning, had a 
slight shock. We were walking, as I said, 
along the margin of the water, which was over¬ 
looked by a low perpendicular bank, smothered 
with undergrowth; we had gone scarcely forty 
yards when we were brought up by the sight 
on the sand of pugs, which were not there when 
we passed five minutes before, and, looking 
closely, saw that the water was slowly perco¬ 
lating into the deep impression made by the ball 
of the tiger’s foot, which alighted a few inches 
from the edge of the pool. The beast clearly 
had jumped across immediately after we had 
passed: the wonder was that we did not hear 
the rustle of the jungle as he sprang, for the 
gap he made in the grass was plain as the pugs 
at our feet. He had gone straight up the 
sand, and I had not the slightest difficulty in 
tracking him through the strip of grass to the 
opposite side, where two beautifully clear pugs, 
showing the claws this time, marked where he 
had jumped upon a fallen tree which spanned 
the water. Moung Gyee did not follow me 
through the grass; he looked in, saw that the 
place “was not good.” and said he would “watch 
on this side.” his motives being those which 
impelled Mark Twain to go and “see if any 
Bedouins were coming in the other direction,” 
on a classic occasion. It certainly was a place 
in which it would have been rash to follow a 
wounded tiger, as the grass was merely the 
fringe, hiding a perfect chaos of water-worn 
holes, boulders, stranded trunks, and flood 
wreck of all kinds. You might have stumbled 
over a crouching tiger before you saw him. He 
had not dallied there for a moment, however, 
and the excitement was over almost before it 
had fairly begun. 
When we returned to the spot where we 
left the men, “the sky had shut,” as the Bur¬ 
mese put it; in other words, night had closed 
in. I never carried a tent on these short hill 
trips, and a camp without a tent is not de¬ 
serving of the name. The stout basket which 
contained eatables and table equipage stood 
forlornly apart with the gun cases, bedding- 
roll and chair, while the men sat around the 
fires nursing their knees and watching the rice- 
pots boil. From the smoke curling slowly over¬ 
head fell a constant shower of insects, not too 
stupified to sting; but the men accepted this 
trifle with the calm of phlegmatic temperament 
under a thick skin. Most of the party were 
content to “laze,” but two or three who, com¬ 
bined with energy and taste for good living, 
(Continued on page 576.) 
HUNTING ELEPHANT’S EQUIPMENT AND CREW. 
