I was at Trincomalee; an elephant in this situation had taken possession of the road at some leagues distant, and, for reasons best known to himself, would not allow a soul to pass it. He remained _perdu_ in the jungle till he saw somebody coming, and then he would burst out and attack them. It is the custom to travel in palanquins from one part of the island to another, as in all parts of India. If some officer or gentleman was obliged to proceed to Colombo or elsewhere, so soon as the palanquin came towards him, out came the elephant; the native bearers, who knew that it was no use arguing the point, dropped the palanquin and fled, and all that the occupant could do was to bundle out and do the same before the elephant came up, otherwise he had little chance of his life, for the elephant immediately put his knees in the palanquin and smashed it to atoms. Having done this, he would toss the fragments in the air in every direction, at the same time carefully unfolding all the articles contained in the palanquin for the occupants use--shirts, trowsers, boots, bottles, books, undergoing a most rigid examination, and after that being rendered to fragments. If the cooley who had the charge of the bag of letters made his appearance, he was immediately pursued until he gave up the whole correspondence, official or private. The bag was opened, every letter was opened one by one, and then torn in fragments and tossed to the winds. In this way did he keep possession of the road, stopping all communication for several weeks, until it was his sovereign will and pleasure that people might receive their letters and travel across the country as before. Now what an unaccountable freak was this! It was like the madness of a reasonable being. If I recollect right, it was when Captain Owen was on the east coast of Africa, some of his party who landed were attacked by elephants, who threw them down on the ground and, instead of killing them, as might have been expected, and would have given them no trouble, they drew up a large quantity of mud in their trunks and poured it into their mouths so as to nearly to suffocate them, and then left them. On another occasion, they put their fore feet on their limbs, so as to pinch and bruise them severely in every part of their bodies, but avoided their bones so as not to fracture one. Now this was evidently two species of torture invented by the elephants, and these elephants in a wild state. There certainly is something very incomprehensible about these animals.