The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Elephant God, by Gordon Casserly

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Title: The Elephant God

Author: Gordon Casserly

Release Date: November 17, 2004 [EBook #14076]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE ELEPHANT GOD

BY GORDON GASSERLY

NEW YORK
1921

TO A CERTAIN ROGUE ELEPHANT RESIDENT IN THE TERAI FOREST

THE SLAYER OF DIVERS MEN AND WOMEN

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MUCH
INSTRUCTION AND IN THE HOPE THAT SOME DAY IN THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS
THEY MAY MEET AGAIN AND DECIDE THE ISSUE

FOREWORD TO AMERICAN EDITION

Twenty years ago I dedicated my first book, _The Land of the Boxers; or
China Under the Allies_, to the American officers and soldiers of the
expeditionary forces then fighting in the Celestial Empire--as well as to
their British comrades. And when, some years afterwards, I was visiting
their country, right glad I was that I had thus offered my slight tribute
to the valour of the United States Army. For from the Pacific to the
Atlantic I met with a hospitality and a kindness that no other land could
excel and few could equal. And ever since then, I have felt deep in debt to
all Americans and have tried in many parts of our Empire to repay to those
who serve under the Star Spangled Banner a little of what I owe to their
fellow-countrymen.

Only those who have experienced that sympathetic American kindness can
realise what it is. It is all that gives me courage to face the reading
public as a writer of fiction and attempt to depict to it the fascinating
world of an Indian jungle, the weird beasts that people it, and the
stranger humans that battle with them in it. The magic pen of a Kipling
alone could do justice to that wonderful realm of mountain and forest that
is called the Terai--that fantastic region of woodland that stretches for
hundreds of miles along the foot of the Himalayas, that harbours in its dim
recesses the monsters of the animal kingdom, quaint survivals of a vanished
race--th