fessional just the one point he needed to beat so splendid an amateur; and he beat him “by sometimes ramming him against a tree, sometimes poking him in the side so as almost to knock him over, sometimes raising his trunk above his head, and bringing it down on the poor tusker’s neck. At last the wild elephant fairly gave up, surrendered, and made no further pretence of either fighting or flying.”
Henceforth, in far other scenes, other Jung Pershads and other Bijlis, mighty in battle, will win renown, and, winning it, will do for Central Africa what the camel has done for Central Asia, and what ships have done for all the world’s coasts. They will be the pioneers of trade, true missionaries, Asia’s contingent in the little army that has set out to conquer, but without bloodshed, the desperate savagery of the Dark Continent.
At any rate it was a finely picturesque conception, this of compelling the Behemoths of the Indian jungles to serve in the subjection of the Titans of the African forests, and to bring face to face, in the centre of a continent, the two sole survivors of a once mighty order; and I could never look at Jumbo lounging along the path in the Zoölogical Gardens without thinking also of his noble kinsmen working their way in the cause of civilization and of man across the Dark Continent.
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Sagacity and docility are, no doubt, therefore, virtues which the elephant shares with man, but it is hardly fair to it to illustrate its intelligence by quoting the deplorable incident of the tailor, unless we are also prepared to illustrate the sagacity of men and women by referring to the performances of the Artful Dodger.
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