he will sound it
with his trunk and press upon it with one foot, but he will not trust
his weight if he can perceive the slightest vibration.

Their power of determining whether bogs or the mud at the bottom of
tanks are deep or shallow is beyond my comprehension. Although I have
seen elephants in nearly every position, I have never seen one
inextricably fixed in a swamp. This is the more extraordinary as their
habits induce them to frequent the most extensive morasses, deep lakes,
muddy tanks and estuaries, and yet I have never seen even a young one
get into a scrape by being overwhelmed. There appears to be a natural
instinct which warns them in their choice of ground, the same as that
which influences the buffalo, and in like manner guides him through his
swampy haunts.

It is a grand sight to see a large herd of elephants feeding in a fine
lake in broad daylight. This is seldom witnessed in these days, as the
number of guns have so disturbed the elephants in Ceylon that they
rarely come out to drink until late in the evening or during the night;
but some time ago I had a fine view of a grand herd in a lake in the
middle of the day.

I was out shooting with a great friend of mine, who is a
brother-in-arms against the game of Ceylon, and than whom a better
sportsman does not breathe, and we had arrived at a wild and miserable
place while en route home after a jungle trip. Neither of us was
feeling well; we had been for some weeks in the most unhealthy part of
the country, and I was just recovering from a touch of dysentery:
altogether, we were looking forward with pleasure to our return to
comfortable quarters, and for the time we were tired of jungle life.
However, we arrived at a little village about sixty miles south of
Batticaloa, called "Gollagangwelleweve" (pronunciation requires
practice), and a very long name it was for so small a place; but the
natives insisted that a great number of elephants were in the
neighborhood.

They also declared that the elephants infested the neighboring tank
even during the forenoon, and that they nightly destroyed their
embankment, and would not be driven away, as there was not a single gun
possessed by the village with which to scare them. This looked all
right; so we loaded the guns and started without loss of time, as it
was then one P. M., and the natives described the tank as a mile
distant. Being perfectly conversant with the vague idea of space
described by a Cin