, and with inconceivable toil and
hardship, that the eye of the hunter is cheered by the sight of one.
Owing to habits peculiar to himself, the elephant is more inaccessible,
and much more rarely seen, than any other game quadruped, excepting
certain rare antelopes. They choose for their resort the most lonely and
secluded depths of the forest, generally at a very great distance from
the rivers and fountains at which they drink. In dry and warm weather
they visit these waters nightly, but in cool and cloudy weather they
drink only once every third or fourth day. About sundown the elephant
leaves his distant midday haunt, and commences his march toward the
fountain, which is probably from twelve to twenty miles distant. This he
generally reaches between the hours of nine and midnight, when, having
slaked his thirst and cooled his body by spouting large volumes of water
over his back with his trunk, he resumes the path to his forest
solitudes. Having reached a secluded spot, I have remarked that
full-grown bulls lie down on their broad-sides, about the hour of
midnight, and sleep for a few hours. The spot which they usually select
is an ant-hill, and they lie around it with their backs resting against
it; these hills, formed by the white ants, are from thirty to forty feet
in diameter at their base. The mark of the under tusk is always deeply
imprinted in the ground, proving that they lie upon their sides. I never
remarked that females had thus lain down, and it is only in the more
secluded districts that the bulls adopt this practice; for I observed
that, in districts where the elephants were liable to frequent
disturbance, they took repose standing on their legs beneath some shady
tree.

Having slept, they then proceed to feed extensively. Spreading out from
one another, and proceeding in a zigzag course, they smash and destroy
all the finest trees in the forest which happen to lie in their course.
The number of goodly trees which a herd of bull elephants will thus
destroy is utterly incredible. They are extremely capricious, and on
coming to a group of five or six trees, they break down not unfrequently
the whole of them, when, having perhaps only tasted one or two small
branches, they pass on and continue their wanton work of destruction. I
have repeatedly ridden through forests where the trees thus broken lay
so thick across one another that it was almost impossible to ride
through the district, and it is in situatio