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There was a large tamarind-tree growing alone upon the plain about a hundred and fifty paces from the water's edge, exactly in a line with the position of the elephant. The mud plastered to a great height upon the stem showed this to be his favourite rubbing-post after bathing.
Little Bouncey's horse was still yawning and star-gazing, and Bouncey, being quite unequal to riding him and well-nigh exhausted, 'downed' him against a rubbing-post in the middle of a field, making a 'cannon' with his own and his horse's head, and was immediately the centre of attraction for the panting tail. Bouncey got near a pint of sherry from among them before he recovered from the shock.
Almost every morning a long-eared crowd assembles around the Government-offices, where the rubbing-post is set up, and one after another they are admitted to find what relief they may from this cheap luxury. It is pleasant to observe that they almost all come out again with smiling countenances. For a moment, the sense of pain or discontent has been alleviated by the gentle application.
The bark was rubbed completely away, and this appeared to have been used for years as a favourite rubbing-post by some immense elephant. The mud reached full twelve feet up the trunk of the tree, and there were old marks far above this which had been scored by his tusks.
I soon restored quiet, and ordering the horses to be led into the jungle lest he should discover them, I made the people conceal themselves; and taking my two Moormen gun-bearers, who were trusty fellows that I had frequently shot with, I crept cautiously back to my former position, and took my station behind the large tree farthest from the point which commanded the favourite rubbing-post and within fifty yards of it.
As men set up a block of wood in a field to become a rubbing-post for asses; as bachelors take to themselves wives, and elderly spinsters individuals of the feline race, in order to have something on which to vent their occasional ill-humours, so is a Governor set up in a colony, that the settlers may have a proper object or mark set apart, on which they may satisfactorily discharge their wrongs, sorrows, wants, troubles, distractions, follies, and unreasonable expectations.
He drove his ikkipage hisself; and it was always hauled by four beautiful white horses, and two outriders rode in harness bridles. There was a groom behind him, and another at the rubbing-post, all in livery as glorious as New Jerusalem. What a 'stablishment he kept up at that time!
By means of this I was descending rapidly, and in apparent safety, when a huge hog, about whose rotund stomach, and indeed about whose whole air and physiognomy, there was something which reminded me of the Angel of the Odd when this hog, I say, which hitherto had been quietly slumbering in the mud, took it suddenly into his head that his left shoulder needed scratching, and could find no more convenient rubbing-post than that afforded by the foot of the ladder.
The bark of the tree a full-topped shady acacia for some distance up was worn smooth upon one side, just as though cattle had used it for a rubbing-post. "What has done it?" asked the field-cornet and Hendrik in a breath. No further explanation was necessary. The hunters remembered what they had been told about a curious habit which the elephant has of leaning against a tree while asleep.
The bark of the tree a full-topped shady acacia for some distance up was worn smooth upon one side, just as though cattle had used it for a rubbing-post. "What has done it?" asked the field-cornet and Hendrik in a breath. No further explanation was necessary. The hunters remembered what they had been told about a curious habit which the elephant has of leaning against a tree while asleep.
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