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The korrakan is a sweet grass, growing about two feet high, and so partial are the elephants to this food that they will invade the isolated field even during the daytime. Driven out by shouts and by shots fired by the natives from their secure watch-houses, they will retreat to their cover, but in a few minutes they reappear from another part of the jungle and again commence their depredations.
Elevated watch-houses are placed near to the mountain fields, and it is possible that in times of great danger people might have had similar places of refuge in or near to their villages, but the old men emphatically deny that they were ever tree-dwellers, and there is nothing in the folk-tales to justify such a belief; on the contrary, the tales-indicate that the type of dwelling found to-day, was that of former times.
The country through which we passed was fertile. Everywhere were fields of grain, wheat, oats, and, as we were descending into the lower land, corn. The little watch-houses for guarding the newly-sown fields are a striking feature of the landscape.
'At length many months passed away without his being either seen or heard of; the people began to hope that he had died from the effect of poisoned arrows, which had frequently been shot at him from the watch-houses in high trees; and, by degrees, the terror of his name had lost its power, and he ceased to be thought of.
I do not suppose this officer to be above thirty years of age, of which he has passed the first twenty-five in orphan-houses or in watch-houses; but no tyrant ever had a more cringing slave, or a more abject courtier.
Other messengers were dispatched, by my advice, to the different turnpikes; and a third set sent off to various watch-houses, to enquire whether any intelligence could be obtained of accidental deaths, or other mischances.
He had killed several natives in this manner, involving them in the common ruin with their watch-houses. The terror created by this elephant was so extreme that the natives deserted the neighbourhood that he infested.
Two of these expeditions were made on two consecutive nights, under the protection of police detailed for the service. On one of these nights we also visited the lock-up houses, watch-houses, and opium-eating establishments. It was in one of the horrid opium-dens that he gathered the incidents which he has related in the opening pages of "Edwin Drood."
Close to the edge of this the cultivated land of the village extended, and people were stationed in watch-houses erected up among the branches of the trees, shrieking and yelling, and beating drums, and making every conceivable noise to drive back into the jungle the elephants who were accustomed to take their morning repast off their fields of coracan, and maize or millet.
At a point within the bay, but some ten miles from the town, a practicable landing-place had been found. Watch-houses overlooked it, but watchmen there were none. Drake had got touch with the maroons. By his directions a party of them had stolen down from the hills, and as the sentries came out from the city in the evening, swiftly and silently they had been every one despatched.
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