Umboo, the Elephant
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Howard R. Garis >> Umboo, the Elephant
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Circus Animal Stories
UMBOO, THE ELEPHANT
By
HOWARD R. GARIS
Author of
"The Bedtime Stories"
"The Uncle Wiggily Series"
"The Daddy Series"
Etc.
CONTENTS
Chapter
I Baby Umboo
II On The March
III Sliding Down Hill
IV Umboo Learns Something
V Picking Nuts
VI Umboo Is Lost
VII Umboo And The Snake
VIII Umboo Finds His Mother
IX To The Salt Spring
X In A Trap
XI Umboo Goes To School
XII Umboo Is Sold
XIII Umboo On The Ship
XIV Umboo In The Circus
XV Umboo Remembers
CHAPTER I
BABY UMBOO
"Oh, my! But it's hot! It is just too hot for anything!" cried Chako,
one of the monkeys in the circus cage. "It is hotter under this tent
than ever it was in the jungle! Whew!" and he hung by his tail and
swung to and fro from a wooden bar.
"In the jungle we could find a pool of water where we could keep
cool," said another monkey, who was poking around the floor of the
cage, hoping he could find a peanut. But there were only shells. "I
wish I could go back to the jungle," he chattered.
"What did you come away from the jungle for, if you don't like it in
this circus?" asked Woo-Uff, the big yellow lion, who lay on his back
in his cage, his legs stuck up in the air, for he was cooler that way.
"Why did you come from the jungle, Chako?"
"I didn't want to come," answered the swinging monkey. "But some white
and black hunters caught me, and a lot more of us chattering chaps,
and took us away from the jungle."
"That's right, my boy!" exclaimed the deep, rumbly voice of Umboo, the
biggest elephant in the circus. "None of us animals would have come
away from the jungle if we could have had our way. But, now that we
are here, we must make the best of it."
"How can one make the best of it when it is so hot?" asked Chako. "The
sun shines down on this circus tent hotter than ever it did in the
jungle. And there is no pool of water where we can splash and be
cool."
"Oh, if water is all you want, I can give you some of that," spoke
Umboo. "Wait a minute!"
Near the elephants, of whom Umboo was one on a long line, chained to
stakes driven in the ground, was a big tub of water, put there for
them to drink when they wanted to. Umboo put his long, rubbery hose of
a trunk down into this tub of water, and sucked up a lot, just as you
fill your rubber ball at the bathroom basin.
"Look out now, monkeys!" cried the elephant. "It's going to rain!" and
he sort of laughed away down in his throat. He couldn't laugh through
his nose, as his nose was his trunk, and that was full of water. "Look
out for a shower!" he cried.
With that the elephant went:
"Woof-umph!"
Out from his trunk, as if from a hose, sprinkled a shower of water.
Over the cage of monkeys it sprayed, wetting them as might a fall of
rain.
"Here comes some more!" cried Umboo, and again he dipped his trunk in
the tub of water, sucked up some in the two hollow places, and again
squirted it over the monkeys' cage.
"Oh, that's good! That's fine!" cried Chako. "That was like being in a
jungle rain. I'm cooler now. Squirt some more, Umboo!"
"No, hold on, if you please!" rumbled another elephant. "It is all
right for Umboo to splatter some water on you poor monkeys, but if he
quirts away all in the tub we will have none to drink."
"That's so," said Umboo. "I can't squirt away all the water, Chako. We
big elephants have to drink a lot more than you little monkeys. But
when the circus men fill our tub again, I'll squirt some more on you."
"Thank you!" chattered Chako. "I feel cooler, anyhow. And we monkeys
can't stand too much water. This felt fine!"
The monkeys in the cage were quite damp, and some began combing out
their long hair with their queer little fingers, that look almost like
yours, except that their thumb isn't quite the same.
"If Umboo can't squirt any more water on us, maybe he can do something
else to help us forget that it is so hot," said Gink, a funny little
monkey, who had a very long tail.
"What can he do, except squirt water on us?" asked Chako. "And I wish
he'd do that again. It's the only thing to make us cooler."
"No, I wasn't thinking of that, though I do like a little water,"
spoke Gink. "But don't you remember, Umboo, you promised to tell us a
story of how you lived in a jungle when you were a baby elephant?"
"Oh, yes, so he did!" exclaimed Chako. "I had forgotten about that. It
will make us cooler, I think, to hear you tell a story, Umboo. Please
do!"
"Well, all right, I will," said the big elephant, as he swung to and
fro; because elephants are very seldom still, but always moving as
they stand. And they sleep standing up--did you know that?
"I'll tell you a story about my jungle," went on Umboo. "But perhaps
you will not like it as well as you did the story Snarlie the tiger
told you."
"Oh, yes we will," said Snarlie himself, a big, handsome striped tiger
in a cage not far from where the monkeys lived. "You can tell us a
good story, Umboo."
"And make it as long as the story Woo-Uff, the lion, told us," begged
Humpo, the camel. "I liked his story."
"Thank you," spoke Woo-Uff, as he rolled over near the edge of his
cage where he could hear better. "I'm glad you liked my story, Humpo,
but I'm sure Umboo's will be better than mine. And don't forget the
funny part, my big elephant friend."
"What funny part is that?" asked Horni, the rhinoceros.
"Oh, I guess he means where I once filled my trunk with water and
squirted some on a man, as I did on the monkeys just now," said the
swaying elephant.
"Why did you do that?" Chako wanted to know.
"Well, I'll tell you when I get to that part of my story," said the
elephant. "Now do you all want to hear me talk?"
"Oh, yes! yes!" cried the animals in the circus tent. "Tell us your
story, Umboo! Tell us about when you were a baby in the far-off jungle
of Africa."
"I did not come from Africa; I came from an Indian jungle," said
Umboo. "My friends, the African elephants, are much larger than I am,
and they are wilder and fiercer, and so they are hardly every caught
for the circus."
"I remember a great big elephant in a circus I was once with--not this
one, though," said Humpo, the camel. "His name was Jug--no it was not
Jug, and it wasn't Jig, but it began with a J."
"Maybe it was Jumbo," suggested Umboo.
"That was it--Jumbo!" cried Humpo. "He was a very big elephant."
"Yes, I guess he was," said Umboo. "I have heard of him, but I never
saw him. He was an African elephant, and they are all large. Poor
Jumbo!"
"Why do you say that?" asked Chako the monkey. "Poor Jumbo?"
"Because he is dead," said Umboo. "Poor Jumbo was struck by one of
those big puffing animals, of steam and steel and iron, that pull our
circus train over the shiny rails."
"You mean a choo-choo-locomotive-steam-engine," said Woo-Uff, the
lion.
"I suppose that is the name," said Umboo. "Anyhow, Jumbo was hit by an
engine, and, big as he was, it killed him. His bones, or skeleton, are
in a museum in New York now."
"Is New York a jungle?" asked Gink, who had not been with the circus
very long.
"New York a jungle? Of course not!" laughed Snarlie, the tiger. "New
York is a big city, and sometimes we circus animals are taken there to
help with the show. I've been in New York lots of times."
"Well, don't let it make you proud," said Chako, the other monkey. "I
have been there myself, and I'd much rather be in the jungle."
"Say, are we going to listen to you animals talk or hear the story
Umboo is going to tell us?" asked Humpo, the camel. "I thought he was
going to make us forget the heat."
"So I am," said Umboo, in a kind voice, "Only I wanted to speak about
old Jumbo, There used to be a song about him, many years ago. It went
something like this, and I heard a little English boy sing it:
"Alice said to Jumbo:
'I love you!'
Jumbo said to Alice:
'I don't believe you do;
'Cause if you love me truly,
As you say you do,
Come over to America
To Barnum's show!'"
"That's the song they used to sing about Jumbo, more than twenty years
ago," said Umboo.
"My! How can you remember so far back?" asked Chako.
"Oh, we elephants live to a good old age," said Umboo. "Why, I am
fifty years old now, and yet I am young! Some of the elephants in the
jungle lived to be a hundred and twenty years old!"
"Oh, my!" cried Chako. "Did they have circuses as long ago as that?"
"Yes, but not the kind that traveled about, and showed in white
tents," said Umboo. "But I have heard my father and mother say that we
elephants live to be very old."
"And can you remember so far back, when you were a baby in the
jungle?" asked Humpo.
"Oh, yes, very easily," answered Umboo. "I am going to tell you a
story about how first I was a little elephant in the great, green
forest, or jungle, and then I'll tell you how I was caught, and worked
in a lumber yard in India, and how I was then sold to a circus."
"Well, then, please begin!" begged Chako. "It is getting hot again in
this monkey cage, and if you haven't any water to squirt on us tell us
your story."
"I will!" promised the elephant. And then, as the afternoon show was
over, and it was not yet time for the night one to begin, the animals
had a little quiet time to themselves. And, as they had done once
before, they got ready to listen to a story.
In the book before this I have written for you the story of Woo-Uff,
the lion. And before that I gave you the story of Snarlie, the tiger.
And now we come to Umboo.
"The first thing I remember," began the elephant, "was when I was a
little baby in the jungle."
"Were you very little?" asked Snarlie the tiger.
"Well, I have heard my mother say I weighed about two hundred pounds
the first day I came into the world," answered Umboo. "So, though I
was little for an elephant, I would have made a very big monkey, I
suppose. And for a time I just stayed near my mother, between her two,
big front legs, so the other elephants would not step on me, and I
drank the milk my mother gave me, for my teeth were not yet ready for
me to chew roots, leaves and grass."
"Tell us something that happened!" begged Chako, "and make it
exciting, so we will forget about the heat!"
"Well," said Umboo, "I'll tell you of a terrible fright we had, and
how--"
But just then something else happened. Into the tent came running one
of the circus men, and he cried to another, who was asleep on some hay
near the elephants.
"Come! Loosen Umboo! We need him to help us get one of the wagons out
of the mud! Bring Umboo, the strongest of all elephants!"
CHAPTER II
ON THE MARCH
Umboo, the big circus elephant, was unchained from the stake in the
circus tent to which he was made fast, and led out by one of the men.
"Oh, where are you going?" asked Horni, the rhinoceros, who had been
taking a little doze, and who woke up, just as the men came in. "I
thought I heard some one say you were going to tell a story, Umboo,"
spoke the rhinoceros.
"I was going to, and I started it," the elephant answered, "but now I
must go out and help push a wagon loose from where it is stuck in the
mud. I'll be back pretty soon, for it is no trouble at all for me to
push even a big circus wagon."
"Yes, you are very strong," said Chako, the monkey. "Well, don't
forget to come back and tell us about the jungle. That will make us
forget the heat."
"Come, Umboo!" called one of the men, as he loosed the heavy elephant
chains. "You must help us with the wagon."
Out of the circus tent walked the big elephant. He could understand
some of the things the circus men said to him, just as your dog can
understand you, when you call:
"Come here, Jack!" Then he runs to you, wagging his tail. But if you
say:
"Go on home, Jack!"
How his tail droops, and how sadly your dog looks at you, even though
you know it is best for him to go back, and not, perhaps, go to school
with you, like Mary's little lamb.
So, in much the same way, Umboo knew what the men wanted of him. He
was led across the circus lot, outside the big, white tent, that was
gay with many-colored flags, and as Umboo swayed along, some boys, who
were watching for what they might see, caught sight of the great
elephant.
"Hey, Jim! Here's one of the big ones!" shouted one boy.
"Maybe he's going to take a drink out of the canal," said another.
"Maybe they're going to give him a swim," spoke a third boy.
But the men had something else for Umboo to do just then. They led him
to where one of the big wagons, covered with red and gold paint, and
shiny with pieces of looking glass, was stuck fast in the mud on a
hill. For it had rained the day before the circus came to show in the
town, and the ground was soft.
"Now, Umboo!" called the circus man, who was really one of the
elephant keepers, and who gave them food and water, "now, Umboo, let
us see if you can get this wagon out of the mud, as you did once
before. The horses can not pull it, but you are stronger than many
horses."
The horses, with red plumes on their heads, were still hitched to the
wagon. There were eight of them, but they had pulled and pulled, and
still the wagon was stuck in the mud.
"Are you going to help us, Umboo?" asked one of the horses who knew
the elephant, for the circus animals can talk among themselves, just
as you boys and girls do. "Are you going to help us?"
"I am going to try," Umboo answered. "You look tired, horsies! Take a
little rest now, while I look and see which is the best way to push.
Then, when I blow through my nose like a trumpet horn, you pull and
I'll push, and we'll have the wagon out of the mud very soon!"
Umboo was led up to the back of the wagon. He looked at where the
wheels were sunk away down in the soft ground, and then, being the
strongest and most wise of all the beasts of the world, the elephant
put his big, broad head against the wagon.
"Now, then, horsies! Pull!" he cried, trumpeting through his trunk,
which was hollow like a hose. "Pull, horsies!"
The horses pulled and Umboo, the elephant, pushed, and soon the wagon
was out on firm, hard ground.
"That's good!" cried the circus man. "I knew Umboo could do it!"
Then he gave the elephant a sweet bun, which he had saved for him, and
back to the tent went Umboo.
"Now, please go on with your story!" begged Chako. "Tell us what
happened in the jungle."
"I will," said Umboo, and this is the story he told. Umboo was only
one of a number of baby elephants that lived with their fathers and
mothers in the deep, green jungles of India. Not like the other jungle
beasts were the elephants, for the big animals had no regular home.
They did not live in caves as did the lions and tigers, for no cave
was large enough for a herd of elephants.
And, except in the case of solitary, or lonely elephants, which are
often savage beasts, or "rogues," all elephants live in herds--a
number of them always keeping together, just like a herd of cows.
Another reason why elephants do not live in one place, like a lion's
cave, or in a nest or lair under the thick grass where a tiger brings
up her striped babies, is that elephants eat so much that they have to
keep moving from place to place to get more food.
They will eat all there is in one part of the jungle, and then travel
many miles to a new place, not coming back to the first one until
there are more green leaves, fresh grass, or new bark on the trees
which they have partly stripped.
So Umboo, the two-hundred-pound baby elephant, lived with his mother
in the jungle, drinking nothing but milk for the first six months, as
he had no teeth to chew even the most tender grass.
"Well, are you strong enough to walk along now?" Umboo's mother asked
him one day in the jungle, and this was when he was about half a week
old.
"Oh, yes, I can walk now," said the baby elephant, as he swayed to and
fro between his mother's front legs, while she stood over him to keep
the other big elephants, and some of the half-grown elephant boys and
girls, from bumping into him, and knocking him over. "I can walk all
right. But why do you ask me that?" Umboo wanted to know.
"Because the herd is going to march away," said Mrs. Stumptail, which
was the name of Umboo's mother. "They are going to march to another
part of the jungle, and your father and I will march with them, as we
do not want to be left behind. There is not much more left here to
eat. We have taken all the palm nuts and leaves from the trees. We
have only been waiting until you grew strong enough to march."
"Oh, I can march all right," said Umboo, telling his story to the
circus animals in the tent. "Look how fast I can go!"
Out he started from under his mother's body, striding across a grassy
place in the jungle. But Umboo was not as good at walking as he had
thought. Even though he weighed two hundred pounds his legs were not
very strong, and soon he began to totter.
"Look out!" cried his mother. "You are going to fall!" and she reached
out her trunk and wound it around Umboo, holding him up.
"Hello!" trumpeted Mr. Stumptail, coming up just then with a big green
branch in his trunk. "What's the matter here?"
"Umboo was just showing me how well he could walk," said his mother,
speaking elephant talk, of course. "I told him the herd would soon be
on the march, and that he must come along."
"But we won't go until he is strong enough," said Umboo's father.
"Here," he said to Mrs. Stumptail, "eat this branch of palm nuts. They
are good and sweet. Eat them while I go and see Old Tusker. I'll tell
him not to start to lead the herd to another part of the jungle until
Umboo is stronger."
Then, giving the mother elephant a branch of palm nuts, which food the
big jungle animals like best of all, Mr. Stumptail went to see Tusker,
the oldest and largest elephant of the jungle--he who always led the
herd on the march.
"My new little boy elephant is not quite strong enough to march, yet,"
said Mr. Stumptail to Tusker. "Can we wait here another day or two?"
"Oh, yes, of course, Mr. Stumptail," said the kind, old head elephant.
"You know the herd will never go faster than the mothers and baby
elephants can travel."
And this is true, as any old elephant hunter will tell you.
"Thank you," said Mr. Stumptail, to Tusker; for elephants are polite
to each other, even though, in the jungle, they sometimes may be a bit
rough toward lions and tigers, of whom they are afraid.
Back to the mother elephant and Baby Umboo went Mr. Stumptail, to tell
them there was no hurry about the herd marching away. And two or three
days later Umboo had grown stronger and was not so wobbly on his legs.
He could run about a little, and once he even tried to bump his head
against another elephant boy, quite older than he was.
"Here! You mustn't do that!" cried his mother. "What trick are you up
to now?"
"Well, this elephant laughed at your tail," said Umboo. "He said it
was a little short one, and not long like his mother's!"
"Don't mind that!" said Mrs. Stumptail, with a sort of laugh away down
in her trunk. "All our family have short, or stumpy tails. That is how
we get our name. The Stumptail elephants are very stylish, let me tell
you."
"Oh, then it's all right," said Umboo, who was called by that name
because he had made that sort of noise or sound through his nose, when
he was a day old. And elephants and jungle folk are named for the sort
of noises they make, or for something they do, or look like, just as
Indians are named.
So Umboo played in the deep jungle forest with the other little
elephant boys and girls until his mother and father saw that he was
strong enough to walk well by himself.
"Now we will start on a long march!" called Tusker one day. "The
jungle here is well eaten, and, besides, it is no longer safe for us
here. So we will march."
"Why isn't the jungle safe here any more?" asked Umboo of his mother.
"I'll tell you," answered Tusker, who heard what the little elephant
asked. "The other day," went on the big chap, "I went to the top of
the hill over there," and he pointed with his trunk. "I heard up there
a noise like thunder, but it was not thunder."
"What was it?" asked Umboo, who liked to listen to the talk of the old
herd-leader. The other little elephants also gathered around to
listen.
"It was the noise of the guns of the hunters," said Tusker. "They are
coming to our jungle, and where the hunters come is no place for us.
So we must march away and hide. Also there is not much food left here.
We must go to a new jungle-place."
Raising his trunk in the air Tusker gave a loud call. All the other
elephants gathered around him, and off he started, leading the way
through the green forest.
"Now if I go too fast for any of you baby elephants, just squeak and
I'll stop," said the big, kind elephant. "We will go only as fast as
you little chaps can walk."
"You are very kind," said Mrs. Stumptail, helping Umboo, with her
trunk, to get over a rough bit of ground.
On and on marched the elephants to find a new place in the jungle,
where they would be safe from the hunters, and where they could find
more sweet bark, leaves and palm nuts to eat. Umboo walked near his
mother, as the other small elephant boys and girls walked near their
mothers, and the bigger elephants helped the smaller and weaker ones
over the rough places.
Pretty soon, in the jungle, the herd of elephants came to what seemed
a big silver ribbon, shining in the sun. It sparkled like a looking
glass on a circus wagon, though, as yet, neither Umboo, nor any of the
other big animals had ever seen a show.
"What is that?" asked Umboo of his mother.
"That is a river of water," she answered. "It is water to drink and
wash in."
"Oh, I never could drink all that water," said the baby elephant.
"No one expects you to!" said his mother, with an elephant laugh. "But
we are going to swim across it to get on the other side."
"What is swimming?" asked Umboo.
"It means going in the water, and wiggling your legs so that you will
float across and not sink," said Mrs. Stumptail. "See, we are at the
jungle river now, and we will go across."
"Oh, but I'm afraid!" cried Umboo, holding back. "I don't want to go
in all that water."
Mrs. Stumptail reached out her trunk and caught her little boy around
the middle of his stomach.
"You must do as I tell you!" she said. "Up you go!" and she lifted him
high in the air.
"Oh, did she let you fall?" suddenly asked Chako, who, with the other
animals in the circus tent, was eagerly listening to the story Umboo
was telling. "Did she let you fall?"
CHAPTER III
SLIDING DOWN HILL
"Look here!" cried Snarlie, the tiger, when Chako, the monkey, had
asked his question. "Look here, Chako! You mustn't interrupt like that
when Umboo is talking! Let him tell his story, just as you let me tell
mine. And maybe Umboo's jungle story will go in a book, as mine did."
"Is yours in a book?" asked Humpo, the camel.
"It is," answered Snarlie, and he did not speak at all proudly as some
tigers might. "My story is in a book, and there are pictures of me,
and also Toto, the little Indian princess. For I came from India, just
as Umboo did."
"Now who is talking?" asked Woo-Uff, the lion. "I thought we were to
listen to Umboo's story."
"That's right--we were," said Snarlie. "I'm sorry I talked so much.
But I was telling Chako about the books we are in, Woo-Uff."
"Yes, books are all well enough," said the lion, "but give me a good
piece of meat. Now go on, Umboo. What was it Chako asked?"
"I wanted to know if Umboo's mother let him fall when she lifted him
high up in her trunk when they came to the jungle river," said the
monkey in the circus cage.
"No," answered Umboo, "she did not drop me. My mother was very strong,
and her trunk had a good hold of me. She didn't drop me at all."
"Then what did she lift you up for?" asked Chako. "Once, in the jungle
where I came from, I saw a big elephant lift up a tiger in his trunk,
and the elephant threw the tiger down on the ground as hard as he
could, and hurt him."
"That was because the tiger was going to bite the elephant if he
could," answered Umboo. "Elephants only have their tusks, and trunk
and big feet to fight with. They can't bite as you monkeys can, nor as
lions and tigers can. But my mother lifted me up in her trunk to put
me on her back."
"What did she want to do that for?" asked Humpo, the camel. "Was a
hunter coming with a gun?"
"No, but she was going to swim across the river with the rest of the
herd," answered Umboo, "and she knew I was too little to know how to
swim yet. I learned how later, though, and I liked the water. But this
time my mother took me across the river on her back."
"It's a good thing your mother didn't have a camel-back like Humpo,"
said Woo-Uff, with a sort of chuckling laugh.
"Why?" asked Horni, the rhinoceros.
"Because, if Mrs. Stumptail had a back, with humps in, as the camels
have, Umboo would have fallen off into the water," said the lion, as
he opened his big mouth in a sleepy yawn, showing his big, white,
sharp teeth.
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