WILD ELEPHANTS. AMONG animals, this stupendous race has always, like the leviathan in the watery world, sustained great eminence. If not "created hugest" of quadrupeds, its sagacity, its formation, its tremendous strength, have been by turns the theme not merely of the novelist, but the poet. When our first parents sojourned in their innocence before the fall, in the elysian bowers of Eden, among the various animals that gambolled before them— "the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed and it has ever been an object of interest to the naturalist, and to every observant eye accustomed to find instruction in the woods and fields; and, beneath the open sky, to "look through nature up to nature's God." Among the jungles of India, these immense beasts roam their thick recesses like moving mountains. The instances of absolute reason, as it may with propriety be called, which they exhibit when tame; their great usefulness to man, and their regard for friends, if collected in one record, would fill a goodly-sized book. The Rev. HOBART CAUNTER, in some remarks upon the dangerous nature of a jungle, through which he had to pass near the Fall of Gungavapettah, in India, has illustrated in words, better than any that we could employ, the scene which the engraver's burin has so vividly transferred to the adjacent picture. The jungle, he declares, "was so infested with tigers and wild elephants, that we considered it prudent to obtain a guard of sepoys from the British resident, who was kind enough to add to our escort a number of peons, armed with long spears. Though we had considerable confidence under so strong a convoy, we nevertheless could not but occasionally feel a few disquieting apprehensions as we every now and then heard the distan yell of the tiger, or the crackling of the bushes under the heavy tramp of the elephants, which invariably retreated upon our approach. For the last three miles before we reached the cataracts, the jungle was so thick that we were frequently |