He Stands Within A Wilderness Where
The Monster Of The Forest Holds Dominion; He Knows Not What A Day, Not
Even What A Moment, May Bring Forth; He Trusts In A Protecting Power,
And In The Heavy Rifle, And He Is Shortly Upon The Track Of The King Of
Beasts.
The king of beasts is generally acknowledged to be the 'lion'; but no
one who has seen a wild elephant can doubt for a moment that the title
belongs to him in his own right.
Lord of all created animals in might
and sagacity, the elephant roams through his native forests. He browses
upon the lofty branches, upturns young trees from sheer malice, and from
plain to forest he stalks majestically at break of day 'monarch of all
he surveys.'
A person who has never seen a wild elephant can form no idea of his real
character, either mentally or physically. The unwieldy and
sleepy-looking beast, who, penned up in his cage at a menagerie,
receives a sixpence in his trunk, and turns round with difficulty to
deposit it in a box; whose mental powers seem to be concentrated in the
idea of receiving buns tossed into a gaping mouth by children's
hands,--this very beast may have come from a warlike stock. His sire may
have been the terror of a district, a pitiless highwayman, whose soul
thirsted for blood; who, lying in wait in some thick bush, would rush
upon the unwary passer-by, and know no pleasure greater than the act of
crushing his victim to a shapeless mass beneath his feet.
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