Show elephants at their work the elephants round us were drag ging the logs to the mill to be sawn they were harnessed for this with a broad and heavy chains A native looped the chains round the logs and the elephant started off with them and deposited them on the arol ley others were picking up the sawn planks with their trunks and carry ing them across the yard to be piled A mahout sat on the neck of every elephant and it the animal picked up too small a plank the mahout would hint with his iron spike that two might go to that load then grunt ing the elephant would pick up the second with infinite delicacy of bal ance turn march over and deposit them lestee the pile always returning for another load so long as there were any planks ready when there were none he would take his ease in the sun and wait or perhaps there were heavy logs to be pushed from one place to another and if pushing would do with his trunk curled against the log no elephant would give himself the trouble of picking it up any more than a housemaid will pick up a chair on castors more fascinating it was than I 1 can tell to aee the jungle patriarch kneel down to a heavy log twist his trunk round it place it on the top of the pile and then calculate its position and push and pull until it was square in its place the oddest because the most reasonable thing was td see the elephant pushing against the end of a very heavy log stretch out one hind leg to give himself balance and pur chase that seemed to bring him somehow very near to us he was not only doing our work but he was doing it in our way presently with one accord all the elephants dropped work and moved in the direction of the sheds that means it s 11 clock said the foreman dinner hour not for king edward himself could we get etem to do a stroke of work from now 3 its their off time at 3 they legin again and work till dusk and they start about 6 in the morning but they don t understand overtime pall mall magazine |