Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/195

 English servants have, nor anything that other Mussulman servants, either of a lower or a higher caste, have cooked, so her son comes five miles with tea that he has cooked for her, and she cannot drink it while any that are not of her own caste are in the room.

Yesterday when George and I had got on our elephant, which is a very large one, Chance chose to go running before it, barking for joy, as he used to do when he went out walking at home, and the elephant was so frightened that it would not move on, and screamed, I suppose, from fear of being eaten up. It is so tall that, though it kneels down to take us up, we have, at the peril of our lives, to mount a ladder of eight steps to get on its back; and when it gets up, first on its fore feet, we are tilted back in an alarming manner. One of its paws would cover two such little splacknucks as Chance, and knead them into the ground, so that not a hair would be left visible; but still they cannot stand a dog’s barking, and I was obliged to have the mouse taken away for fear of its annihilating the mountain.

Another curious creature is what they call an elephant-fly, which occasionally comes into the