The Arabian Nights Entertainments - Volume 01Anonymous
General
The Arabian Nights Entertainments - Volume 01
Anonymous
Arabs -- Folklore; Fairy tales; Folklore -- Arab countries
frightful spectacle I continued immovable, and was so much
frightened, that my bow and arrows fell out of my hands. My fears
were not vain; for, after the elephants had stared upon me some
time, one of the largest of them put his trunk round the root of
the tree, and pulled so strong, that he plucked it up, and threw
it on the ground: I fell with the tree, and the elephant, taking
me up with his trunk, laid me on his back, where I sat more like
one dead than alive, with my quiver on my shoulder. He put
himself afterwards at the head of the rest, who followed him in
troops, and carried me to a place where he laid me down on the
ground, and retired with all his companions. Conceive, if you
can, the condition I was in: I thought myself to be in a dream;
at last, after having lain some time, and seeing the elephants
gone, I got up, and found I was upon a long and broad hill,
covered all over with the bones and teeth of elephants. I confess
to you that this object furnished me with abundance of
reflections. I admired the instinct of those animals; I doubted
not but that was their burying-place, and they carried me thither
on purpose to tell me that I should forbear to persecute them,
since I did it only for their teeth. I did not stay on the hill,
but turned towards the city, and, after having travelled a day
and a night, I came to my patron. I met no elephant in my way,
which made me think they had retired further into the forest, to
leave me at liberty to come back to the hill without any
obstacle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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