An Elephant Nursemaid.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 18 September 1914, Page 8

An Elephant Nursemaid.

In "Tigerland" (Chapman and Hall) Mr. C. E. Gouldsbury, formerly of the Indian Police, has written his reminiscences of fortyyears' sport and adventure in Bengal. He relates an extraordinary comedy witnessed by a friend who was sitting in the verandah of his tent watching his elephants, which were picketed under some trees a short distance off. He saw the wife of one of the mahouts emerge from her tent-like shelter with an infant in her arms. She took it close up to a huge "tusker," to whom she made a low salaam ; then out the sleeping child down before it, and sal;:-.imed again. Next she spread ; lanket on the ground, and placed the baby in the centre of it,, well within reach of the tusker's proboscis. Then salaaming again, more ostentatiously, went off to the bazaar. Presently the child awoke, and soon began to crawl towards the edge of the blanket. But when it had gone a foot or two the elephant, stretching out his trunk, gently pulled it back to its original position. Again and again the baby attempted similar excursions to regions beyond the blanket's edge ; but always with the same result. Exploration under elephantine supervision finally proved too dull, and so the child lay quiet for a while, gazing up at its huge nurse, then dropped off peacefully to sleep again.