Thirteen years among the wild beasts of India : their haunts and habits from personal observations, with an account of the modes and capturing and taming elephants . as able to decide upon a certain ford, markedA on plan, on the Honhollay river, at which to make an attempt. Theriver was here about twenty yards wide, but ordinarily with only a narrowand shallow stream flowing over its clean gravelly bed. In the rainy monthsheavy but short-lived floods sometimes rose twenty feet in a few elephants crossing from ite east to its west bank used this and twoother fords (the banks were not
Thirteen years among the wild beasts of India : their haunts and habits from personal observations, with an account of the modes and capturing and taming elephants . as able to decide upon a certain ford, markedA on plan, on the Honhollay river, at which to make an attempt. Theriver was here about twenty yards wide, but ordinarily with only a narrowand shallow stream flowing over its clean gravelly bed. In the rainy monthsheavy but short-lived floods sometimes rose twenty feet in a few elephants crossing from ite east to its west bank used this and twoother fords (the banks were not practicable except at these places), markedX, X on plan. They also retreated by the same routes. When on the westside of the river it was their custom to seek shelter in covers D or E, andwe calculated that by stopping the two fords (X, X) we could drive a herdout of D or E across by ford A, which was indeed their favourite route. Upon these considerations I marked out a kheddah at A, on the east mr •* *o i • ;,,„ ^IJJJK Upt* ,,liF. :- . i /or drivuiq from/ covers D Picket of elephccnts Aremoved, from li Jungle paths -----Scale approoanuttelyto 3 miles. \ AN ANXIOUS TIME. 103 bank of the river, consisting of a horse-shoe-shaped piece of ground sur-rounded by a trench. The trench was about five hundred yards round, andthe entrance to the enclosed space was by the ford. The elephants wouldenter by the heel of the shoe, as it were, and would have to go some twohundred yards before they came to the farthest point, the boundarytrench. The trench was eight feet wide at top, six at bottom, and eightfeet deep (this I subsequently found was a greater section than is necessaryto confine wild elephants), and in a few days it was finished, except whererock was met and had to be blasted. There were eight hundred men atwork, whose wages were about threepence each per diem. They removedabout one cubic yard per man per diem. It was nearly a month before all was in readiness, as the remo
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidthir, booksubjectelephants
