I shall tell you. In most jungles there is a river or even a small stream from which the elephants can drink. But the river or stream may go winding in and out of the jungle, so that it is in one part of the jungle but not in another part. So a wise leader tries to keep his herd near one of those parts of the jungle through which the river flows. In fact, if the elephants and even the other wild animals are lucky enough to find a fairly big river, and the jungle near that river has plenty of food in it, then the animals stay near there almost all the time. They eat from the jungle and drink from the river; and sometimes they come to the very same place to drink--as at the Midnight Pool, which I described to you in Book I. So if the leader of the elephant herd is lucky enough to find such a jungle, with plenty of food and a big river in it, he keeps the herd there all the time; and then they have no more trouble about food or drink. But suppose the leader cannot find such a place? Suppose there is a river, but not enough food near the river? Then what does a wise leader do? He leads the herd in such a way as to make _a kind of curve_. He goes into the jungle by the easiest way in the beginning; then, after the elephants have eaten a little, he starts turning slightly toward the direction in which the river flows. When the elephants have eaten a little more, he turns still more in that direction. In this manner he leads the herd in a kind of curve toward the river, browsing all the way from the trees near by. So, at the end of the day, when the elephants have had enough to eat, they reach the river and have also enough to drink. Is not that a very clever method of providing both food and drink for the herd? If the herd sleep near the bank that night, they start from there the next morning in their search for food; and they usually go into the jungle by the same path by which they came. But on _returning_ to the river to drink that night, the leader need not bring them back by exactly the same path. The fact that they did not have enough to eat right near the river shows that the jungle is not very thick there; so the elephants will have no trouble in making a fresh path, a little higher up the river, or a little lower down. A wise leader usually does that: he leads the herd to the river slightly higher up or lower down, and so he makes a slightly different curve through the jungle. Why? Because if he kept to exactly the same curve from the jungle to the river every day, the herd would eat up all the leaves along that path in a few days. So, by changing the curve a little from time to time, he allows fresh leaves to grow there meanwhile.