" What caused the elephant to be so admired was that he had no enemies in the animal world. No other beast could conquer him. He could die (in the past) only a natural death. It occurred usually at dusk, when the elephant came to the water. They would stand at the edge of a lake or river, reach out far with their trunks, and drink. But the day would come when the tired old elephant could no longer raise his trunk, and to drink clean water he would have to walk further and father out into the lake. His legs would sink into the muck, deeper and deeper. The lake pulled him into its cavernous interior.

There on the bottoms of our lakes are the age old elephant cemeteries. "

― Ryszard Kapuściński , The Shadow of the Sun