Elephants
tedious. When the elephant reaches the river-bank he stacks the logs for the inspection of the men who come to buy. They are marked in such a way that each merchant can, later on, easily recognize his own property; then the elephants take them one by one, and put them in the creek or river. They push them over boulders and sandbanks, remove fallen trees out of the way, and, finally, bring them where there is a good current, and they can be bound into rafts and floated south.
When the logs arrive at the saw-mills other elephants land them, and so well do they understand their work that they rarely need the direction of the mahout; they are so intelligent that when they hear the dinner-bell sound for the workmen, they instantly drop their logs and scamper off, screaming with joy, just like a lot of children let out of school.
They are up to all kinds of tricks. For instance, at night they are turned loose to feed. A heavy, trailing chain is attached to them, and as they move about, the chain drags on the ground and leaves a trail, by means of which they are traced in the morning. But an elephant which has made up its mind to run away has been known "to carefully gather up the tell-tale chain and carry it for miles on its tusks." Again, each elephant has a bell, and the driver recognizes the whereabouts of his own elephant, even when afar off, by the sound of this bell. But some elephants will remove the bell with their trunk, and then run away and hide themselves. They frequently jerk a mahout whom they do not like on to the ground and trample on him.
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