The Elephant God
Page 1
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THE ELEPHANT GOD
BY GORDON GASSERLY
NEW YORK1921
TO A CERTAIN ROGUE ELEPHANT RESIDENT IN THE TERAI FOREST
THE SLAYER OF DIVERS MEN AND WOMEN
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MUCHINSTRUCTION AND IN THE HOPE THAT SOME DAY IN THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDSTHEY MAY MEET AGAIN AND DECIDE THE ISSUE
FOREWORD TO AMERICAN EDITION
Twenty years ago I dedicated my first book, _The Land of the Boxers; orChina Under the Allies_, to the American officers and soldiers of theexpeditionary forces then fighting in the Celestial Empire--as well as totheir British comrades. And when, some years afterwards, I was visitingtheir country, right glad I was that I had thus offered my slight tributeto the valour of the United States Army. For from the Pacific to theAtlantic I met with a hospitality and a kindness that no other land couldexcel and few could equal. And ever since then, I have felt deep in debt toall Americans and have tried in many parts of our Empire to repay to thosewho serve under the Star Spangled Banner a little of what I owe to theirfellow-countrymen.
Only those who have experienced that sympathetic American kindness canrealise what it is. It is all that gives me courage to face the readingpublic as a writer of fiction and attempt to depict to it the fascinatingworld of an Indian jungle, the weird beasts that people it, and thestranger humans that battle with them in it. The magic pen of a Kiplingalone could do justice to that wonderful realm of mountain and forest thatis called the Terai--that fantastic region of woodland that stretches forhundreds of miles along the foot of the Himalayas, that harbours in its dimrecesses the monsters of the animal kingdom, quaint survivals of a vanishedrace--the rhinoceros, the elephant, the bison, and the hamadryad, thatgreat and terrible snake which can, and does, pursue and overtake a mountedman, and which with a touch of its poisoned fang can slay the most powerfulbrute. The huge Himalayan bear roams under the giant trees, feeding onfruit and honey, yet ready to shatter unprovoked the skull of a poorwoodcutter. Those savage striped and spotted cats, the tiger and thepanther, steal through it on velvet paw and take toll of its harmlessdenizens.
But, if I cannot describe it as I would, at least I have lived the life ofthe wild in the spacious realm of the Terai. I would that I had the powerto make others feel what I have felt, the thrill that comes when facing theonrush of the bloodthirstiest of all fierce brutes, a rogue elephant, orthe joy of seeing a charging tiger check and crumple up at the arrestingblow of a heavy bullet.
I have followed day after day from dawn to dark and fought again and againa fierce outlaw tusker elephant that from sheer lust of slaughter hadkilled men, women, and children and carried on for years a career of crimeunbelievable.
No one that knows the jungle well will refuse to credit the strangest storyof what wild animals will do. Of all the swarming herds of wild elephantsin the Terai, the Mysore, or the Ceylon jungles no man, white or black, hasever seen one that had died a natural death. Yet many have watched themclimbing up the great mountain rampart of the Himalayas towards regionswhere human foot never followed. The Death Place of the Elephants is alegend in which all jungle races firmly believe, but no man has ever foundit. The mammoths live a century and a half--but the time comes when each ofthem must die. Yet no human eye watches its death agony.
Those who know elephants best will most readily credit the strangest talesof their doings. And there are men--white men--whose power over wild beastsand wilder fellow men outstrips the novelist's imagination, the true taleof whose doings no resident in a civilised land would believe.
GORDON CASSERLY.