now began to show traces of the .strain of travel.
Each day the elephants took longer to accomplish
the twenty miles or so I aimed a t ; each day they,
grew visibly thinner, and the drivers complained that
they were not given sufficient time in which to feed.
There was some truth in their contention for the
elephant who depends on the jungle for his sustenance
has practically to feed ail day to fill himself. In this
and in many other respects elephant transport is unsatisfactory;
yet the fact remains that the elephant,
huge7 as he is, and unwieldly as he looks, will travel
where no other pack-animal can go at all.
Before leaving the village, I paid a visit to one
of the long barracks, and found it to consist o f : a
series of four rooms, similar to mine, and opening info
each other. They were extremely dirty, and the floor,
which was of the slightest character, shook at every
step I took. Their denizens had fled before my approach,
and they must have presented to an onlooker
outside a very comic picture, as they hastily crowded
down the narrow ladders at one end, while I entered
at the other. Two minutes was as much as I could
endure, at that early hour, of the terrible amalgam of
smells that greeted me on entering. My own cottage
of the previous night had been happily free from offence
in this respect. This I attributed to the. fact that it
was much newer, that it had no pigstye under it, and
that it probably belonged to a young couple beginning
life, and was therefore neater and less populated than
the other houses.