Home › Contents › Performing Elephants

Performing Elephants

(83) crawled to such a distance as to verge mal to be got out? The owner thought upon the limits of his range (for the and thought, and concluded that the only animal was chained by the leg to a peg mode was to enlarge the cavity by digdriven into the ground), he would stretch ging a slope from the top; but this was out his trunk, and lift it back as gently as too tedious a process for the prisoner, possible to the spot whence it started. whose mind had evidently been occupied Perhaps one of the best authenticated in discussing a means of escape. The stories of elephantine sagacity is told by tip of his proboscis just reached the the author of "The English in India." edge of the pit, from which he managed A valuable Elephant had, very strangely, to pull down fragments of the frame-work for they are the most cautious of animals, by which the mouth had been covered; fallen into a deep pit that had been pre- these he trampled under his feet; the pared as a tiger-trap. He was luckily not hint was at once taken, he was plentifully injured, but, when discovered, presented supplied with felled timber, and, after a knotty problem to the English officer many hours' hard work, built himself who owned him; how was the huge ani- out of the pit and escaped.