The Golden Chersonese and The Way Thither, page 288 by Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
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mahout was here among friends, and the salutations were numerous. If nose-rubbing as a form of greeting is practiced I have never seen it. What I have seen is that when one man approaches another, or is about to pay a visit, he joins his hands as if in supplication, and the other touches them on both sides, and afterward raises his hands to his lips and forehead. It is a courteous looking mode of salutation.
At this point the Singhalese said that the natives told him that it was possible to ford the Perak, but that the mahout said that the elephant was a "diver," and would probably dive, but that there was no danger to us except of getting very wet. I liked the prospect of a journey on the other side, so we went down a steep bank into the broad, bright, river, and putting out from the shore, went into the middle, and shortly the elephant gently dropped down and was entirely submerged, moving majestically along, with not a bit of his huge bulk visible, the end of his proboscis far ahead, writhing and coiling like a water snake every now and then, the nostrils always in sight, but having no apparent connection with the creature to which they belonged. Of course we were sitting in the water, but it was nearly as warm as the air, and so we went for some distance up the clear, shining river, with the tropic sun blazing down upon it, with everything that could rejoice the eye upon its shores, with little beaches of golden sands, and above the forest the mountains with varying shades of indigo coloring.
There would have been nothing left to wish for if you had been there to see, though you would have tried to look as if you saw an elephant moving submerged along a tropical river every day with people of three races on his back!!
The Singhalese said, "I'm going to take you to Koto-lamah; no European has been there since the war. I've never been there, nor the Resident either." I have pored over blue books long enough to know that this is a place which earned a most unenviable notoriety during the re