Umboo, the Elephant | Page 5

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