In the forest the trees are felled by men who use heavy, long-handled axes. This work is done in the wet season, so that the trees fall in soft ground and do not get seriously damaged. The logs are arranged in parallel rows by the elephants, and then each elephant is harnessed to a log, which he proceeds to drag towards the stream. Young stems are placed under the big logs to serve as rollers. The distance from the forest to the river is often as much as ten miles, and is rarely less than five miles. The elephants move very slowly--at a pace averaging less than three miles an hour--and the process of taking the logs to the river is therefore slow and tedious. When the elephant reaches the river-bank he stacks the logs for the inspection of the men who come to buy. They are marked in such a way that each merchant can, later on, easily recognize his own property; then the elephants take them one by one, and put them in the creek or river. They push them over boulders and sandbanks, remove fallen trees out of the way, and, finally, bring them where there is a good current, and they can be bound into rafts and floated south. When the logs arrive at the saw-mills other elephants land them, and so well do they understand their work that they rarely need the direction of the _mahout_; they are so intelligent that when they hear the dinner-bell sound for the workmen, they instantly drop their logs and scamper off, screaming with joy, just like a lot of children let out of school. They are up to all kinds of tricks. For instance, at night they are turned loose to feed. A heavy, trailing chain is attached to them, and as they move about, the chain drags on the ground and leaves a trail, by means of which they are traced in the morning. But an elephant which has made up its mind to run away has been known "to carefully gather up the tell-tale chain and carry it for miles on its tusks." Again, each elephant has a bell, and the driver recognizes the whereabouts of his own elephant, even when afar off, by the sound of this bell. But some elephants will remove the bell with their trunk, and then run away and hide themselves. They frequently jerk a _mahout_ whom they do not like on to the ground and trample on him. They can be used to make their lazy brothers work. In such cases a good big tusker is employed. He digs his tusks into the side of the idle one, and forces him to take up his log. Sometimes the beasts fight amongst themselves, and then they seem to aim chiefly at biting off one another's tails.