out eighteen feet long and two feet in diameter, and they were in
tended to lie on either bank of the stream, parallel to the brook and
close to the edge. These she placed greatest with the care in their
exact positions, unassisted by any one.[1] She rolled them gently over
with her head, then with one foot, and keeping her trunk on the
opposite side of the log, she checked its way whenever its own momentum
would have carried it into the stream. Although I thought the work
admirably done, she did not seem quite satisfied, and she presently got
into the stream, and gave one end of the log an extra push with her
head, which completed her task, the two trees lying exactly parallel to
each other, close to the edge of either bank.

Tame elephants are constantly employed in building stone bridges, when
the stones required for the abutments are too heavy to be managed by
crowbars.

Many were the difficulties to contend against when the first attempts
were made in agriculture at Newera Ellia. No sooner were the oats a
few inches above ground than they were subjected to the nocturnal
visits of elk and hogs in such numbers that they were almost wholly
destroyed.

A crop of potatoes of about three acres on the newly-cleared forest
land was totally devoured by grubs. The bull and stock were nearly
starved on the miserable pasturage of the country, and no sooner bad
the clover sprung up in the new clearings than the Southdown ram got
hoven upon it and died. The two remaining rams, not having been
accustomed to much high living since their arrival at Newera Ellia, got
pugnacious upon the clover, and in a pitched battle the Leicester ram
killed the Cotswold, and remained solus. An epidemic appeared among
the cattle, and twenty-six fine bullocks died within a few days; five
Australian horses died during the first year, and everything seemed to
be going into the next world as fast is possible.

Having made up my mind to all manner of disappointments, these
casualties did not make much impression on me, and the loss of a few
crops at the outset was to be expected; but at length a deplorable and
unexpected event occurred.

The bailiff's family consisted of a wife and daughter; the former was
the perfection of a respectable farmer's wife, whose gentle manners and
amiable disposition bad gained her many friends; the daughter was a
very pretty girl of nineteen.

For some time Mrs. Fowler had been suffering from an illness of lon