It was an interesting sight to see the rough plain yielding to
the power of agricultural implements, especially as some of these
implements were drawn by animals not generally seen in plough
harness at home.
The "cultivator," which was sufficiently large to anchor any
twenty of the small native bullocks, looked a mere nothing
behind the splendid elephant who worked it, and it cut through
the wiry roots of the rank turf as a knife peels an apple. It
was amusing, to see this same elephant doing the work of three
separate teams when the seed was in the ground. She first drew a
pair of heavy harrows; attached to these and following behind
were a pair of light harrows, and behind these came a roller.
Thus the land had its first and second harrowing at the same time
with the rolling.
This elephant was particularly sagacious; and her farming work
being completed, she was employed in making, a dam across a
stream. She was a very large animal, and it was beautiful to
witness her wonderful sagacity in carrying and arranging the
heavy timber required. The rough trunks of trees from the lately
felled forest were lying within fifty yards of the spot, and the
trunks required for the dam were about fifteen feet long and
fourteen to eighteen inches in diameter. These she carried in
her mouth, shifting her hold along the log before she raised it
until she had obtained the exact balance; then, steadying it with
her trunk, she carried every log to the spot, and laid them
across the stream in parallel rows. These she herself arranged,
under the direction of her driver, with the reason apparently of
a human being.
The most extraordinary part of her performance was the arranging
of two immense logs of red keenar (one of the heaviest woods).
These were about eighteen feet long and two feet in diameter, and
they were in tended to lie on either bank of the stream, parallel
to the brook and close to the edge. These she placed greatest
with the care in their exact positions, unassisted by any one.*
She rolled them gently over with her head, then with one foot,
and keeping her trunk on the opposite side of the log, she
checked its way whenever its own momentum would have carried it
into the stream. Although I thought the work admirably done, she
did not seem quite satisfied, and she presently got into the
stream, and gave one end of the log an extra push with her head,
which completed her task, the two trees lying exactly parallel to
each other, close to the edge of either bank.
*Directed of course by her driver.
Tame elephants are constantly employed in building stone
bridges, when the stones required for the abutments are too heavy
to be managed by crowbars.
