t or the stain of his presence on leaves or
grass. The victims of the tiger dare not leave footprints for it
will give away their whereabouts. The cheetah, the tiger, and
even the wild cats who live by killing, leave no trace behind.
And that is why the dwelling of men annoys me so; they cannot
even raise their heads without disturbing the air."

In my dream, I asked him, "How did you live with your elephant
mother in the jungle?"

"Our life was a playing and a toil," he answered, "but the toil
was a playing, and the playing was a toil. When the leaves began
to get crisp and colored and the sun called us to the South, we
would leave the foot-hills of the Himalayas and follow the sacred
river bed through vast forest lanes, going further and further
south. Time and again we would come to dwellings of men. How
wretched are men! Wherever they go they murder trees and
slaughter forests! And in these comings and goings, I saw strange
things.

"One winter we came to jungles on the seashore where I saw
crocodiles lying on the banks of the Delta in the daytime, with
their mouths open and little birds going in and out of them,
cleaning their teeth, and eating all the insects that poison
their gums. It is a pity we elephants have no birds to clean our
teeth. And, there too, even in the water you could smell animals
that lived on other animals.

"When we traveled, the old male masters went first, then the
children, then babies and the mothers, and in the rear all the
maidens and young fathers. When we went to sleep at night, the
old ones made a ring of tusks, within which the young maids and
the males each made rings, and in that triple ring we children
slept guarded by elephants and stars. In my sleep in the jungle I
have seen elephant ghosts in the sky shaking their tusks of
lightning, roaring in anger and battling with the moon. These
elephants of the sky are our dead ancestors watching over us. You
know, in the beginning, elephants ruled over all other animals,
and hence, men and monkeys and snakes and tigers were created."

"Who made the rhinoceros?" I asked in my dream.

"The rhinoceros," Kari answered, "is a wayward elephant. Once
when our ancestors were making a very beautiful animal they fell
asleep. They had already completed the thick hide and the small
legs, when some malicious spirit completed the head and instead
of putting a trunk put a horn on it, and that is why the
rhinoceros goes through the jungle like