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Owing to the pace at which I had been riding, both dogs and horses were out of breath, so I resolved not to attack the elephants immediately, but to follow slowly, holding them in view. The elephants were proceeding right up the wind, and the distance between us was about five hundred yards.
An elephant herd is a kind of republic, something like the United States of America, only much smaller and much simpler. So its leader is a sort of president. He is usually the wisest elephant in the herd. You may like to know how the elephants choose their president. I shall tell you how they do that. But you must first consider how the people of the United States choose their President.
On the north side, between the palace and the adjoining wall, rose an artificial mound of earth, a hundred paces high and a mile in circuit at its base. Its slopes were planted with beautiful evergreen trees, which had been transported thither, when well grown, by the aid of elephants. This perpetual verdure gave it the appropriate name of the Green Mount.
Upon arrival at this spot, the aggageers, who appeared to know every inch of the country, declared that, unless the elephants had gone far away, they must be close at hand, within the forest. We were speculating upon the direction of the wind, when we were surprised by the sudden trumpet of an elephant, that proceeded from the forest already declared to be the covert of the herd.
But tame elephants, who had helped to drive us into the trap, came up, and struck us with their trunks, and stuck us with their tusks, and told us to be good, and not to break the fence, and that we would be kindly treated. So we behaved, and, after a while, we found ourselves on this ship." "Do you like it here?" asked Mappo. "Well, it isn't so bad," said Tum Tum.
It is scarcely necessary to explain that the position is accidental, and that it is taken by the elephant not from any difficulty in lying at length on the ground, but rather from the coincidence that the structure of his legs affords such support in a standing position, that reclining scarcely adds to his enjoyment of repose; and elephants in a state of captivity have been known for months together to sleep without lying down.
Long files of elephants, bearing men and merchandise beneath their hooded howdahs, rocking and rolling down the dim and deep-worn forest trails. Snowy, hump-backed bullocks, driven by naked brown men, splashing through the shallow water on the rice-fields harnessed to ploughs as primeval in design as those our Aryan ancestors used.
There was no time to lose, as the herd was in retreat; and, as they were passing across my path, at about two hundred paces distance, I ran at my best speed, stumbling through the broken pie-crust, and sinking in the yawning crevices, the sides of which were perfectly rotten, until I arrived within shot of about twenty-five elephants.
The carcasses of these filling up the ditch, afforded a passage for the enemy as effectually as if earth had been thrown in, or a bridge erected over it; and a horrid carnage took place amid the carcasses of the elephants which lay prostrate.
The whole army was quickly out of the camp, divided into several bodies of cavalry, at the head of which were, on their elephants, the Emperor, the Generalissimo Kamgar Khan, and other principal chiefs.
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