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By permission Illus.rated London Nows. Frontispiece THE IVORY KING *> A POPULAR HISTORY OF fe ELEPHANT AND ITS AELIES BY CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER FELLOW OF THE NEW-YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ETC.; AUTHOR OF “ELEMENTS OF ZOOLOGY,” ‘‘ MARVELS OF ANIMAL LIFE,” ETC. cs Z f ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK . CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1886 re OP al Lead Pe te te, wb ¢ 4 ‘ ~ » ey . i eae) ae i, tata . om yea wv, a « 4 . , " ‘ OR gt , ’ A ' j Copyricnt, 1886, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. | Wt ht ¥! y\ ELECTROTYPED AND : PRINTED | “BY RAND, AVERY, «& COMPANY, Nee Aa, BOR MASS. TO MY MOTHER This Volume IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. aren Gh ebay PEN Eat ‘ . » 4 . : i > ; : ‘ , , , ‘ ‘ bi j ; , ‘ | 5 « Zs); + \ i PREFACE. HE elephant is the true king of beasts, the largest and most powerful of existing land animals, and to young and old 4 never ceasing source of wonder and interest. In former geological ages, it roamed the continental areas of every zone; was found in nearly every section of North America, from the shores of the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and from New England to California. Where the hum of great cities is now heard, in by- gone days the trumpeting of the mastodon and elephant, and the cries of other strange animals, broke the stillness of the vast primeval forest. But they have all passed away, their extirpation undoubtedly hastened by the early man, the abori- ginal hunter; and the mighty race of elephants, which now remains so isolated, is to-day represented by only two species, the African and the Asiatic, forms which are also doomed. To produce the eight hundred tons of ivory used annually, nearly seventy-five thousand elephants are destroyed ; and it does not require the gift of prophecy to foresee their extinction in the near future. ‘The Asiatic elephant is said to be holding its own; but the rapid advance of the British in the East, the introduction of railroads and improvements Which mark the progress of civili- zation in India, where heretofore the elephant has been employed,” cannot fail to have a fatal effect, and their extermination is only Vii vill PREFACE. a matter of time. Knowing these facts, and the close relation- ship which the elephant has ever held in the advancement of man- kind in the East, it stands a picture of absorbing interest, the last of a powerful race, worthy of earnest efforts for its preser- vation. The question of its extinction rests with the rising generation. In America and England the ornithologists have made an appeal for our feathered friends, and ladies have been asked to put their veto upon the excessive use of feathers, which is surely tending to the extermination of our birds. The elephant can be protected in the same way. Every ivory tusk that is brought to the African coast from the interior is said to cost a human life; and that we may have ivory fans, billiard-balls, chessmen, knife-handles, inlaid furniture, grotesque Japanese stat- uary, etc., the elephant, who has been man’s helpmate from 1200 B.C., and perhaps earlier, to the present day, is threatened with extermination. The prominence of the elephant in early times is, I think, not generally appreciated. There was hardly a great public movement entailing war, in the early days of the East, in which these animals did not constitute an all-important element. Defeat and success were, as a rule, determined by the number of elephants ; and the fate of nations may be said to have depended upon the prowess of the proboscidians. In the present volume, I have endeavored to present as sii of the history of the elephant as is compatible with popular inter- est, treating the animal in all its relations to man, and the eco- nomic questions involved: in war, pageantry, sports and games, as a faithful laborer and servant, comrade and friend, its ancestral forms, structure and anatomy. As the work is in no sense a scientific one, the student may regret the absence of details relat- ing to anatomy, etc. To compensate for such omission, I have appended a carefully selected bibliography of all the most impor- PREFACE. 1X tant works, papers, and monographs, ancient and recent, relating to the subject. I am indebted to Mr. George P. Sanderson, officer in charge of the elephant-catching establishment at Mysore, Bengal, whose valuable work embracing his experience with the Asiatic elephant has been frequently consulted; also to the works of Sir Emerson Tennent, and especially to the author of ‘‘ Menageries,’’ published by Messrs. Charles Knight & Co., London. 7s, Be. New YORE, June 1, 1886. HAPTER CON EEN'ES. NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANT. HABITS AND WAYS OF ELEPHANTS THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE ELEPHANT THE MAMMOTH THREE AND FouR TUSKED ELEPHANTS (MASTODONS) JUMBO How ASIATIC ELEPHANTS ARE CAPTURED ALIVE ASIATIC ELEPHANTS IN CAPTIVITY HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT THE WHITE ELEPHANT ELEPHANTS IN CEYLON ROGUE ELEPHANTS HUNTING THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT BABY ELEPHANTS. TRICK ELEPHANTS . : ‘ g : ‘ : ELEPHANTS AND THEIR FRIENDS . : : , TUSKERS AT WORK . IVORY THE ELEPHANT IN THE ARTS. i ; 4 xi xl CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XX. ELEPHANTS IN THE AMPHITHEATRE . ; : : . 241 XXII. THE ELEPHANT IN PAGEANTRY . , ” . . XXIT. WAR ELEPHANTS OF MODERN ASIA . : : : . 255 XXIII. WAR ELEPHANTS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND HIS SUCCESSORS . ; , ‘ ; i , ie ny if XXIV. WAR ELEPHANTS OF THE ROMANS AND CARTHAGINIANS 293 XXV. PROBOSCIDIAN FICTIONS . : ; : . MN ee. BIBLIOGRAPHY . : ‘ , ' ; : : : , 317 Frontispiece. ce ce sc x XVI. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. A TI@ER’s ATTACK, ELEPHANT’S SKULL AND TRUNK, . ELEPHANTS MOVING TIMBER, . THE SIBERIAN MAMMOTH, A Mam™MotTsH Hunt, St. PETERSBURG MUSEUM, . CoHOES MASTODON, THE ete AFRICAN ELEPHANT, JUMBO, BABY JUMBO, . ASIATIC ELEPHANT, HUNTING THE ELEPHANT WITH SworRDs, . THE WHITE ELEPHANT, TOUNG TALOUNG, HERD OF ELEPHANTS, CEYLON, AFRICAN ELEPHANT, HEBE AND BABY BRIDGEPORT, ELEPHANT CARRYING LOGS, ASIATIC ELEPHANT AND TIGER, . Facing Title. xiii FACING PAGE 4 20 30 ig i eae xiv Lust of Lllustrations. FACING PAGE Phuate XVIIL. Srarvur or JUPITER, ... 9°. « .°S) eee | « XVII Prenrsroric Stone Prems, -*.° .¢ 5 so eee 246 “ XIX. THE,PRINCE OF WALES AT LAHORE, .. .. . 255 Br XX. Tue Pruvce or, WALES AT AGRA, [) >a 270 ‘$ XXI. ANCIENT ELEPHANT MEDALLIONS,. .... . . 280 Get) aes “ “ J) CP Da os MEXICAN HIEROGLYPHIC, WITH ELEPHANT FEATURES. Chapter ¥. Pe OLY ORY ENG: Be iV ORGY: Gh, CHAPTER’ T. NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANT. HE elephant is the largest living land animal; and, though numerous forms existed in early geological times, it is represented to-day by two species only, —the African elephant, Hlephas Africanus, and the Asiatic elephant, Elephas Indicus. ‘The geographical range of the former ori- ginally included nearly all Africa, but now the animals are more closely confined to the central interior regions. The Asiatic elephant is found in the forests of India, Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, Cochin China, Sumatra, and the Malay pen- insula; and, while the introduction of railroads into these countries in ensuing years will perhaps result in its extinc- tion, at present its numbers are not growing less. The African elephant differs from its Asiatic cousin in several particulars. The apparent distinguishing features are the tusks, that attain a much greater development, and occur in both sexes, while in the Asiatic species the males alone pos- sess them. The African elephant is at least a foot higher than the Asiatic, attaining a maximum height of eleven feet. 1 2 THE IVORY KING. Its ears are extremely large, covering the shoulder, and in some instances measuring three and a half feet in length by two and a half feet in width, while those of its Indian relative are comparatively small. : When Jumbo —who was an African elephant —and one of the Asiatic elephants stood side by side, the difference was very marked. ‘The summit of the head of the Indian species forms a pyramid, while the front, or forehead, is concave. In Jumbo the front of the head was somewhat convex, the eye larger; and when we compare the feet, we find that while the African elephant has, as a rule, four nails on each foot, the Asiatic has four on each hind-foot, and five on each fore- foot. The number of nails often varies with individuals. The Indian natives esteem those animals most which possess five on each fore-foot, and four on each hind-foot, or eighteen, odd numbers being considered unlucky. The author of “ Oriental Field Sports” says that he has observed elephants with fifteen nails, which no native would purchase; and he heard of one with twenty, and saw one with eighteen. These differences are external, as all elephants possess five toes upon each foot internally. The two species also differ as to their teeth. The incisor teeth of elephants are greatly de- veloped, forming the tusks, and only occur in the upper jaw of living forms. They often attain enormous size, weighing from one hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds. The — tusks of the Asiatic elephants born in this country were vis- — ible at birth. Concerning them in general, Sanderson states that they are not renewed, but are permanent; his informa- tion being based upon the personal observations of many years. Corse, who made observations in the last century, and published them in the “ Philosophical Transactions,” 1799, NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANT. 3 states that the elephants observed by lim had milk, or decidu- ous tusks as well as permament ones; that the milk-tusks appeared at about six months of age, and fell out between the first and second years. He found in the young skull the place of the capsule of the permanent tusks, which appear a couple of months after the loss of the milk-tusks. Huxley says, “In recent elephants, only the two incisors are pre- ceded by milk-teeth ;” and this may be the generally accepted belief. The tusks have no roots, like the teeth of some ani- mals, but fit firmly into what are called premaxillary sockets: and if we should examine this buried, or hidden, portion, we should find that it was partly hollow, so to speak; the ivory at the root being very thin, and surrounding a pulp where the ivory is being secreted. The length of this soft pulp varies according to the age of the animal: thus, in young ele- phants, only a small portion of the tusk outside of the gum is solid ivory; all the rest being hollow, or containing the pulp. As the animal grows, this cavity decreases in length, until in extremely old elephants it disappears entirely, and the tusk is solid ivory. In the left tusk of the elephant shot by Sir Victor Brooke (p.115), the pulp-cavity was wholly obliterated, its place occupied by an exceedingly dense nodular dentine. ‘This tusk was diseased. In the right tusk of the same animal the pulp-hollow extended from the base through half the imbed- ded portion, or thirteen and a half inches. In a pair of tusks owned by Col. Douglas Hamilton, of the British army, the pulp-cavity occupies ten inches and a half of the imbedded length. From this it is evident that the length of a tusk cannot be accurately determined from mere observation, as in a large elephant the sockets are from one foot six inches + THH IVORY KING. to one foot nine inches in length; so that an animal might have a tusk three feet and a half long, and show only one foot and a half of it, the gum alone concealing about four inches. As the ivory is so soft at the base of the tusk, it is evident that it can be easily broken; and, if a bullet or spear strikes this spot, it becomes embedded, and eventually incorporated, in the tusk. Workers in ivory are often surprised to find a leaden bullet in the solid ivory. In a collection in London, there is a section of a tusk which was cut at a piano-forte manufactory in 1805, which has a wrought-iron musket-ball firmly embedded in it; and other instances can be seen in the museum of the London University. In their growth, tusks often assume strange shapes, being liable to twist, just as the horns of a cow. Livingstone saw an elephant with three tusks, the third one growing out be- tween the other two. The tusks frequently grow straight ; some twist in a spiral, others form a complete circle; and many elephants have only one from birth, —like the fictitious © unicorn. ‘These animals are called Gunésh by the natives. The name is that of the Hindoo god of wisdom; and, if the single tusk of the Gunésh is the right one, the animal is reverenced. Some dimensions of tusks will be given in the chapter on Ivory. Perhaps the largest was one sold in Amsterdam some years ago. It weighed, according to Kolok- ner, three hundred and fifty pounds. Eden measured several nine feet in length, and one described by Hartenfels exceeded fourteen feet. There is one in the museum of Natural His- tory, Paris, seven feet in length. The uses to which the large incisors are put, are often exaggerated. The African ele- phant employs its tusks to uproot small mimosa-trees, but GER SENS S 5 ae — ESS Some ee Fic. 1.—Molar Tooth of African Elephant. ** 2.—Molar Tooth of Asiatic Elephant. ce 4.—Skull of Dinotherium. 5-—Molar Tooth of Mastodon giganteus, ad 3-—Molar Tooth of Elephas Americanus. Fic. 6.—Head of an Elephant, showing the muscles. #&. Section of the trunk. Fics. 7, 8, 9.—Show the Uses of the Trunk. Fic. 1o.—Section of the Skull of an Indian Elephant. s, air sinuses. z. nostrils. 3. brain. wz. molar tooth. #. tusk. NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANT. o they are never used to overthrow as large objects as is often stated. Sir Samuel Baker measured mimosa-trees four feet six inches in circumference, and thirty feet high, which ele- 4 phants had pulled down; and the damage they cause in a mimosa-forest is almost incredible. These trees, however, have no tap-root, and are comparatively easy to overthrow. Cumming says, “I have repeatedly ridden through forests where the trees thus broken down lay so thick across one another that it was almost impossible to ride through the district.’ The female elephant uses her tusks to scrape the barks from trees; but the large tusks of the males are designed as a defence,—the elephant with the finest tusks ruling the herd,—and terrific wounds are made by them. The elephant Conqueror, in this country, was killed by being gored in this way; and in India, when it is necessary at the government corral to subdue a mad elephant, a reliable tusker is provided with steel tusks, or glavies, which fit over the stumps of the others, and with these they do terrible work. If we examine the skull of the elephant, we find only two 4 molar teeth on each side of each jaw, eight in all; and no - more, as a rule, are seen at one time, twenty-four in all appearing during the lifetime of an elephant. Lhe teeth appear in a curious way, moving gradually for- ward from behind in regular succession; each old front tooth as it is worn away being pushed out of place by its successor. ‘This wonderful provision is necessary, as the front teeth are worn away by the sand and gritty substances taken in with _ the food. The molar, or grinding, teeth are extremely heavy and large, and are nearly buried in the socket, the upper por- tion only showing. They are made up of a number of trans- verse perpendicular plates composed of a mass of dentine 6 THE IVORY KING. incased in an outside layer of enamel, which is in turn coy- ered by a layer of cement that fills the spaces between the plates, and seems to bind the whole together. _Each of the enamel plates, though appearing separate at the surface, is connected with the others at the base. The difference be- tween the teeth of the Indian and African species is shown in Plate 1. In the Indian elephant the ridges of enamel are narrower, more undulating, and appear in greater numbers than in the African species, in which the ridges are less par- allel, and enclose lozenge-shaped spaces. There are certain other differences in the species, such as the number of bones in the vertebral column, or “backbone;” those of the African elephant numbering from twenty to twenty-one, and those of the Indian elephant nineteen to twenty. In examining the skull of an elephant, we are struck with its enormous size, and the comparatively small space taken up by the brain. The skull is not so heavy as it appears, the interior being divided off into partitions, or air-cells; so that, while there is a large surface for the attachment of the trunk-muscles, the head is massive, but not heavy. The neck of the elephant is so short, that, without some special provision, it could not feed from the ground; and this is seen in the trunk, or proboscis, that is a prolongation of the upper lip and nose, sometimes seven feet in length. It commences at the nasal opening cf the face, contains a pair of tubes closed by a valvular arrange- ment, and at its end on the upper side is a small prolongation like a finger, opposite which is a prominence, or tubercle, that acts asa thumb. The trunk is made up of a vast number of muscles, estimated by Cuvier at about forty thousand. Upon the outside, the trunk appears to be ringed; and it is a most remarkable organ, combining the cffices of a hand and nose, NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANT. 7 and exercising taste, touch, suction, expulsion, and prehension. With it the elephant lifts its driver, pulls over small trees, reaches for its food, takes in water which is in turn expelled into the mouth, squirts water or sand over its body; in fact, there is hardly any thing, from drawing a cork from a bottle, to hurling a tiger into the air, that this wonderful trunk can- not do for its owner. Without it the elephant would starve. One in India which had lost its trunk, had to be fed by having food placed in its mouth. Though the trunk is so useful, it is a very tender and delicate organ, and is not used in the rough manner generally supposed. In making an attack, it is raised high in air out of the way. When a great weight is lifted, it is not the trunk, but the tusks, which are employed, the former only holding the object upon the latter. Once, when visiting the herd of elephants owned by Mr. Barnum, the trainer called my attention to a small hole, or opening of a gland, situated on each side of the head between the eye and the ear, that is scarcely perceptible. It is the opening of a duct, perhaps two inches in length, that extends toward the lachrymal organs, and leads to a secretory gland. From this orifice, there exudes at times a thick, gummy sub- stance, which sometimes clogs up the opening, and un- doubtedly affects the animal unpleasantly; as, when this is filled, the trainer told me that the elephant would take a small stick or straw in its trunk, and endeavor to remove the obstruction. ‘This will be alluded to in the chapter on Rogue Elephants. This exudation is generally considered a warn- ing in the East, that the elephant is going to be ugly, and is called must. In Asiatic wild elephants it occurs usually in cold weather, from November to February. This peculiarity has been noticed from the earliest times: it was remarked 8 THE IVORY KING. upon by Strabo, and is referred to in Hindoo mythology. “The Hindoo poets frequently allude to the fragrant juice which oozes, at certain seasons, from small ducts in the tem- ples of the male elephant, and is useful in relieving him from the redundant moisture with which he is then oppressed ; and they even describe the bees as allured by the scent, and mistaking it for that of the sweetest flowers. When Crishna visited Sanc’ha-dwip, and had destroyed the demon who infested that delightful country, he passed along the bank cf a river, and was charmed with a delicious odor which its waters diffused in their course. He was eager to view the source of so fragrant a stream, but was informed by the natives that it flowed from the temples of an elephant, immensely large, milk-white, and beautifully formed; that he governed a numerous race of elephants, and the odorifer- ous fluid which exuded from his temples had formed the river.” It is evident that wild elephants probe this opening, which is a little larger than a pin-head, and that the sticks used often break off in the orifice, and by working in give the animals such agony that they go mad for the time. When Mr. Cow- per Rose shot an elephant in Africa, the men immediately began to hunt for the “piece of wood in the head, to which they attached great value as a charm.” Mr. Rose was evi- dently not familiar with the gland, or opening. He says, “I sat on one (a dead elephant) while they searched for the wood in his head. It lies about an inch beneath the skin, embedded in fat, just above the eye, and has the appearance of a thorn, or a small piece of twig broken off. Some are without it: and, on examining the spot minutely, we found that there was a small opening in the skin, —a large pore, it ar NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANT. 9 may be; and I conceive that this phenomenon is simply accounted for by the twig breaking in this hole when the animal is in the act of rubbing his head against the bushes.” The body of the elephant, weighing sometimes three tons, is supported by four ponderous, pillar-like legs, the move- ments of which, especially the posterior, or hinder pair attract immediate attention ; and the first impression is, that the hind- legs of the elephant are entirely different from those of any other mammal. They seem to bend in the wrong direction. The difference consists merely in the greater length of the thigh-bone, or femur, which brings the knee much farther down. than in other animals. The horse is equally remarkable for an opposite reason ; as it walks and stands upon the toe-nail of its single toe, while its heel is as high up as the knee of the elephant is low. Covering this wonderful frame, or skel- eton, is the loose, wrinkled skin an inch thick, so tough and — that the ele- phant and others were at one time included in a group called heavy, the thick-skinned animals (pachyderms). ‘The skin is com- © paratively hairless; though some elephants have more than others, and young ones more than adults. The theory gen- erally accepted, is that the elephants of southern countries have lost their hair by long-continued residence in regions where it was not necessary. Quite recently two young or dwarfed Asiatic elephants were exhibited in New York as -mammoths, on account of their superabundance of hair; but it is needless to say that they were ordinary Asiatic elephants. In the present work, it is not necessary to refer particularly / to the internal organization of the elephant, but the subject is replete with interest. The enormous heart, a foot in 10 THE IVORY KING. diameter, in its contraction exerts tons of pressure; and the blood forced out by it must attain almost the force of water from the hose of a fire-engine. Hunters have often been astonished at seeing elephants, which they have been chasing for some time, insert their trunks into their mouths, and there obtain a supply of water that is blown over the dry and heated body. ' The explanation of this is, that the stom- ach of the elephant resembles that of the camel, in having a chamber that can be cut off or separated from the digestive cavity, in which about ten gallons of water is stored as a reserve supply, or to be used as occasion requires. The female elephant is generally smaller than the male. The mammary glands are situated between the fore-legs, and the calf nurses with its mouth, instead of the trunk as was once supposed. The period of gestation is about five hun- dred and ninety-seven days. ‘The weight of the elephant at birth differs in individuals. One observed by Owen weighed one hundred and seventy-five pounds, and stood two feet ten inches in height. The little elephant Bridgeport weighed two hundred and forty-five pounds at birth, and stood three feet in height. The baby elephant America, born in Phila- delphia, weighed two hundred and thirteen and a halt pounds, and measured thirty-four inches and a half at the shoulder. It grew so rapidly, that in eleven months it gained about seven hundred pounds, — not so very surprising, as it came of a very heavy family. Its mother weighed seven thousand and twenty pounds, and was only twenty-three years old; and the father, who was three years older, four tons. The baby’s trunk, or proboscis, was at first twelve inches long, and nine inches in circumference at the root, or base. NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANT. 11 The young Asiatic elephant grows about eleven inches in the first year, eight in the second, six inches in the third, five in the fourth, five in the fifth, in the sixth three and a half, and in the seventh, two and a half, the measurements having been made by Mr. Corse. — 12 THE IVORY KING. CHAPTER II. HABITS AND WAYS OF ELEPHANTS. HE most favorable locality to observe wild elephants in India is in Mysore, where the western ghats, the Billiga- rungun hills, and the Goondulpet and Kakankoté forests, afford fine opportunities to the naturalist and sportsman to observe the largest of living land animals in the haunts of its choice. It is here that the elephant-catcher of the British Government, Mr. George P. Sanderson, makes his head- quarters, and has obtained such signal success for many years. | Wild Asiatic elephants usually travel in herds of from thirty to fifty, though sometimes the number is swelled to one hundred and over; but small herds are the rule, this division allowing them to obtain a much larger supply of food. The necessity of this can be better appreciated when it is known that a band of one hundred elephants require, or will consume, eighty thousand pounds of fodder in a day. The favorite food of the wild Asiatic elephant in Ceylon ~ is palms, especially the cabbage, the young trunks of palmyra and jaggery (Caryota urens). ‘They are also very fond of , figs, the sacred Bo-tree (Ff. religiosa) found near the temples, as well as the Negaha (Messua fer rea). The leaves of the _ jak-tree are considered a great luxury by the huge creatures ; HABITS AND WAYS OF ELEPHANTS. 13 _ while the bread-fruit, wood-apple, sugar-cane, palm, pineapple, watermelon, and the feathery part of the bamboo, are all to its taste. Among the grasses, the mauritius and Guinea grass are eaten; and all the grains. Cocoanuts they break by rolling them under foot. The African elephant affects the succulent mimosa, and larger shoots and branches than its cousin, its teeth being fitted for a coarser diet. ‘They are, according to Drummond, particularly fond of the fruit of the unganu-tree, which seems to intoxicate them; as they stagger about, performing the most remarkable antics for a clumsy beast; often trum- peting so loudly that they can be heard for miles, and sometimes engaging in terrific encounters. When separated into small herds, the elephants all move in concert, as if there was a mutual understanding as to the general route to be taken. Elephants are extremely sure- footed, and will climb quite steep hills. A paper in the Jour- nal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal describes the methods adopted by the elephant in going down-hill. The writer says, ‘An elephant descending a bank of too acute an angle to admit of his walking down it direct (which were he to attempt, his huge body, soon disarranging the centre of gray- ity, would certainly topple over), proceeds thus: his first manceuvre is to kneel down close to the edge of the declivity, placing his chest to the ground. One fore-leg is then cau- tiously passed a short way down the slope; and, if there is no natural protection to afford a firm footing, he speedily forms one by stamping into the soil if moist, or picking out a foot- ing if dry. This point gained, the other fore-leg is brought ‘down in the same way, and performs the same work, a little In advance of the first, which is thus at liberty to move lower 14 THE IVORY KING. still. Then the first one of the hind-legs is carefully drawn over the side, and then the second; and the hind-feet in turn occupy the resting-places previously used and left by the first ones. The course, however, in such precipitous ground is not straight from top to bottom, but slopes along the face of the bank, descending till the animal gains the level below. This an elephant has done at an angle of forty- five degrees, carrying a howdah, its occupant, his attendant, and sporting apparatus, and in much less time than it takes to describe the operation. I have observed that an elephant in descending a declivity uses his knees on the side next the bank, and his feet on the lower side only.” Elephants are | often described as galloping, leaping, and gambolling about like a horse. Such movements are impossible; the only gait being a walk, that can be increased to a very rapid shuffle of fifteen miles an hour fora short distance. It appears to move the legs on the same side together, but this is not ex- actly so. Elephants cannot leap, and never have all four feet from the ground at the same time. Sanderson says, * I have seen an elephant go over quite high hurdles, but never take all four feet from the ground at once. Even the smallest spring is beyond its power; a small trench seven feet across being quite impossible by the largest elephant, although its stride may be six feet and a half long.” The sense of smell is so delicate that a tame elephant till recognize the presence of a wild one three miles away, and by its actions inform the mahout. Selous, the African hunter, watched a herd of elephants cross his trail from a place of security below them; and the moment the trunk of the leader crossed the spot where his foot had been, it stopped, waved its proboscis a few moments, then turned and ran, accom- > HABITS AND WAYS OF ELEPHANTS. 15 panied by the entire band. The herds of elephants, when divided, are family parties, generally all related, and on the march. The mothers with young always take the lead; the old tuskers following along in the rear, taking the front, how- ever, in case of alarm. This method of procedure might appear strange at first; but the mothers probably know how long a tramp the calves can endure, and so the responsibility is left to them. All of my young readers who have visited the circus, must have heard the trumpeting of elephants. This is one of their methods of communication: in other words, elephants have a language that is expressed in different ways, — sometimes by the throat, and, again, by the trunk. When an elephant is pleased, it expresses it by a squeaking noise, —a most ear-grating sound made in the trunk. It also purrs gently, often so low that the keeper alone hears it. When fully enraged, and rushing upon an enemy, its war-cry is a shrill trumpeting that no one can mistake. Rage is also expressed by a low, hoarse rumbling in the throat. Fear or pain is manifested by a shrill squeak, and sometimes by a loud, reverberating roar. The expression of misapprehension or suspicion is entirely different from that of fear, being shown by rapping the trunk upon the ground sharply, at the same time emitting a volume of air from the trunk, that is said to sound like a sheet of tin being rapidly doubled. Desire or want is expressed by the throat, especially in young ele- phants; and any one who watched the famous baby elephant Bridgeport, must have heard the curious sounds it uttered. In the open country the elephant seems to have regular trails, or drives, that are followed season after season with some regularity. During the dry time, that in India is from 16 THE IVORY KING. January to April, they follow the beds of streams, and seek the deep forests, there finding protection from the intense heat; but when the rain commences, in June, they roam into the open country, grazing upon the new and fresh grass pro- duced by the warm showers. With the latter also come innu- merable flies, that also drive them out into the low jungles; one, a huge insect as large as a bee, with a long proboscis, being especially irritating. At this time they frequent the salt-licks, and have been seen to eat earth impregnated with soda. ‘This is the elephant’s medicine, certain kinds of earth being eaten for the same reason that dogs eat grass. When the dry season comes, and the grass is withered and bitter, the herds leave the lowlands, remaining in the hills until the next season. Almost the entire time is spent in, grazing; though they are often seen after a rain warming their great bodies in the sun, or standing upon the open rocks that form a characteristic of the hills of the Mysore country. When the fodder is exhausted in a locality, the march is taken up, and invariably in Indian file; so that it is often difficult to tell whether ten or one hundred elephants are ahead. Upon reaching a good locality, they disperse, and remain in the vicinity for two days orso. Their rest is taken, as a rule, in the middle of the night; particular friends lying down together, or often a family party. ‘They are early risers, and by three o’clock in the morning are either feeding, or on the march. At ten o’clock they will perhaps collect for a rest, then from four in the afternoon until eleven at night they feed or march. ‘There are, of course, exceptions to this. In very cool or wet weather they march all day, and often for various reasons do not lie down for several days at a time. Elephants sleep like horses, either standing or lying down. . HABITS AND WAYS OF ELEPHANTS. 17 The latter is the natural way, though the process of assum- ing a reclining position is a somewhat difficult one. When first captured, they often do not lie down for weeks. It is stated that an elephant owned by Louis XIV. did not lie down for the last five years of its life. It wore two holes in the stone buttress with its tusks, and seemed to support itself to some extent in this way while it slept. Wild African ele- _ phants have been observed leaning against a tree in the for- ests. ‘The enormous ears of the African elephant are used as fans; and when a herd is seen upon a hot day, these huge members are continually moving, either to create a current of air, or to blow away the insect pests with which they are infested. They have also been seen to take a branch in their trunks to brush away flies, using it as a person would a fan. The hearing of the elephant is very acute, much more so than in man; experiment having shown that a female heard her young when the sound was inaudible to a party of English- men between her and the calf. Sir Everard Home experimented with an elephant by musical sounds, and came to the conclusion that it did not possess a musical ear, though it was attracted by certain notes. He says, “I got Mr. Broadwood, as a matter of curiosity, to send one of his tuners with a piano-forte to the menageries of wild beasts in Exeter Change, that I might know the effect of acute and grave sounds upon the ear of a full-grown elephant. The acute sounds seemed hardly to _ attract his notice; but as soon as the grave notes were struck, he became all attention, brought forward the large external ear, tried to discover where the sounds came from, remained in the attitude of listening, and after some time made noises by no means of dissatisfaction.” 18 THE IVORY KING. The elephant is extremely fond of water; and soon after sunrise the Asiatic species can be seen sporting in the streams, floundering about, and spouting water over their huge bodies, piping and trumpeting with conflicting emotions. They are very susceptible to cold, and when obliged to enter water at night, or when it is chilly, are careful to lift their tails and trunks above the surface if possible. So clumsy an animal would hardly be expected to excel in swimming, yet probably few land animals can compete with them in this respect. In 1875 Mr. Sanderson sent a herd of seventy-nine from Dacca to Barrackpur near Caleutta, and . during the march they had to cross the Ganges and several large tributaries. In one place the entire herd swam without touching bottom for six consecutive hours: then after resting a while on a sand-bank, they swam three more, or nine in all, with but one rest. Few land animals could accomplish this without losing some of their number. But Mr. Sanderson states that he has heard of swims even more remarkable than this. Notwithstanding their fine swimming powers, elephants are sometimes drowned by very simple means; and Mr. San- derson records such an instance: “ We had left the Myanee above its junction with the Kurnafoolie, and were marching by land; but, owing to the lie of the country, we had to cross the Kurnafoolie occasionally. It was very deep, and the elephants had to swim. One morning, whilst crossing where it was about eighty yards wide and thirty feet deep in a gorge through a saddle in the hills, a tusker which was secured between two tame ones, one in advance of, and one behind, him, sank like a stone, probably from being seized with cramp from the coldness of the water, and dragged the two females with him. Their mahouts tried in vain to slash HABITS AND WAYS OF ELEPHANTS. 19 the ropes through: they had barely time to save themselves by swimming. Any thing more sudden or unexpected I never witnessed. One elephant appeared again for a brief moment, at least about two feet of her trunk did: she waved us a last farewell, when all was still save the air-bubbles which continued to rise for some time from the calm, deep pool. Every one who witnessed it was shocked. The drivers of the elephants yet to cross hesitated. We could not believe the unfortunate beasts would not come up again. The mahouts sat down, and cried like children over the loss of the faithful beasts they had tended for years. Elephants are such good swimmers, that I cannot understand how it was that the two tame ones were unable to gain the shore, which was only twenty yards distant, by towing the wild one. When they floated, we found that they were in no way entan- gled; and it was not owing to snags catching the ropes, nor to any undercurrent, that they were drawn down. One of the tame ones, Geraldine, was a great favorite of mine; and she and the other were worth twelve hundred dollars each. The tusker was worth twenty-four hundred, so the money lost to the government was considerable.” No subject relating to elephants is so difficult to determine by a mere casual examination, as that relating to its size. Statements from natives can never be relied upon ; as in times of excitement a large bull will appear twenty feet high, and the observers are not at all unwilling to make affidavit to that effect. Asiatic elephants rarely, if ever, attain a height . of ten feet at the shoulder. The largest in the Madras com- missariat stud to-day measures nine feet ten inches. The next largest is owned by his Highness the Mahé4rajah of Mysore, and measures nine feet two inches, and is forty years old. 20 THE IVORY KING. Females are usually smaller. ‘T'wo in the collection at Dacca measure eight feet five inches, and eight feet three inches respectively ; and, to show that this is exceptional, Mr. San- derson measured one hundred and forty in 1874, and found that the largest females measured just eight feet. Mistakes and exaggerations occur from the fact that elephants are often measured by throwing a tape over the shoulders, and, when both ends touch the ground, accepting one-half as the correct height: nine inches may be gained in this way in measuring an eight-foot animal. Mr. Corse, a former superintendent of the East India Company’s elephants at Tiperah, a province of Bengal, who probably saw a greater number of elephants than any European, states that he never heard of more than one Asiatic elephant that exceeded ten feet. This was a large tusker, the property of the Vizier of Oude. Accurate measurements were made, which were as follows : — FT. IN. From foot to foot over the shoulder . ~ oe From the top of the shoulder, perpendicular height ape | ap From the top of the head, when set up ae From the top of the face to the insertion of the tail EB ee _ Mr. Corse says, ‘During the war with Tippoo Sultan, of the fifteen hundred elephants under the management of Capt. Sandys, not one was ten feet high, and only a few males nine and a half feet high. He was very particular in ascertaining the height of elephants used at Madras and in the army under Marquis Cornwallis, from the fact that the most remarkable stories were current at the time concerning large elephants. Madras elephants were reported from fifteen to twenty feet high. The Nabob of Dacca was said to have one, fourteen feet in height; and Mr. Corse took a journey to the locality KE a80q “MHEWIL ONIAOW SLNVHdad la 7 as ‘ ay é ‘ = : ae . sl + A b — Se ‘ ~*~, > a ? e ; os 5, ae es “a F » — ee et ng ih es eh ce Fee dd ed pl ga eg mn th HABITS AND WAYS OF ELEPHANTS. 21 purposely to measure it. He found, that instead of twelve feet, as he thought barely possible, the elephant was only ten. If any of my readers wish to test the accuracy of any state- ‘ment as to an elephant’s height, they have only to measure the distance around its foot twice, which will give nearly the exact height at the shoulder. This is as deceptive as guess- ing the height of a silk hat or the length of a horse’s head. ) A party of young people were once watching some elephants, when the question was propounded how many times around the foot would equal the height. The answers were all over _ ten, and one was fifteen. As the circumference of the fore- foot of the average elephant is about fifty-four inches, this would have given them an animal over sixty feet high. It _ has been supposed by some authors, that elephants are not as t tall now as former ly, that they have degenerated in size * _as the world grew older; but this is not borne out by facts. The Emperor Baber (a contemporary of Henry VII.) says, _“ They say in some islands about Hindostan, elephants grow to the height of ten gez [about twenty feet]. I have never "seen one above four or five gez” [eight or ten feet]. _ The elephants from Hindostan are the smallest; those from Pegu and Ava being larger, asa rule. A skeleton from the latter country was presented to the Czar Peter by the King of Persia; and the taxidermist managed to give it a height, when mounted in the museum at St. Petersburg, of sixteen and a half feet. _ Among the natives of the elephant country, there are “many curious superstitions concerning the age, death, and final resting-place of the great animal. The age to which “they may possibly attain is a matter of conjecture. One h hundred and fifty years is considered the limit by persons 22 THE IVORY KING. who are familiar with the subject. Expert native hunt- ers state that they live one hundred and twenty years, or average about eighty. Mr. Sanderson expresses the belief that they attain one hundred and fifty years, and bases his conclusions from his observations of the famous elephant Bheemruttee, owned by his Highness the Maharajah of My- sore. It was captured in Coorg in 1805, and was then a baby elephant three years old. In 1876 she was in her prime, and did not show any of the evidences of age evinced by ele- phants that were known to be advanced in years; and, when it is remembered that in captivity the animals are often ill- fed and abused, it is evident that they may attain a great age. Natives can determine the age of an Asiatic elephant within afew years. They easily ascertain that of a young or very old animal, but those of middle age present more difficulties. The head of an old elephant is lean and rugged, the bones of the skull being prominent, the eyes and temples sunken ; while the fore-legs, instead of bulging out at the knees, present the same general size throughout. An old elephant also has a different gait from a young one: instead of putting the foot firmly upon the ground, the heel touches it first. The surest test to the native, however, is the ear, which is almost as conclusive a telltale as are the teeth of a horse. : In elephants not older than seven years, the top of the ear is - not turned over at the rim; but, as they grow older, it begins ‘to lap and curve, increasing with age; and in very old ani- mals, the lower portion is always torn and jagged. Elephants attain their full growth at about twenty-five years of age, and are in full vigor at thirty-five. | The Strologas, a tribe of the Billiga-rungun hills, assert and believe that the elephant never dies; while the Kurrabas HABITS AND WAYS OF ELEPHANTS. 23 of Kakankoté, and many others, are firm in the belief that they have some secret place to which they retire to die. When this idea is scouted as romance by a European, the native invariably asks, ** Did you ever see a dead elephant ? Did you ever hear of any one who did?” and the questioner and doubter is obliged generally to answer in the negative. Not only have few sportsmen found an elephant that had evidently died a natural death, but few natives have ever seen one. In all his rambles, covering nearly twenty years in the heart of the elephant country, Mr. Sanderson never found an ele- phant that had died a natural death, nor did he ever meet with a professional native elephant-hunter who had, except during an epidemic among the animals in the Chittagong forest. This seems extremely remarkable when it is remem- bered that, while the flesh might be devoured, the bones and tusks would last a long time. The same belief is entertained by the wild tribes of Ceylon. Sir Emerson Tennent says, “The natives generally assert that the body of a dead ele- phant is seldom or never discovered in the woods; and certain it is, that frequenters of the forest with whom I had con- versed, whether European or Singhalese, alike are consistent in their assurances that they have never found the remains of a dead elephant that had died a natural death. One chief, the Wanyyah of the Trincomalie district, told a friend of mine, that, once after a severe murrain which had swept the province, he found the carcasses of elephants that had died of the disease. On the other hand, a European gentleman, who for thirty-six years without intermission had been living in the jungle, ascending to the summits of mountains in the prosecution of the trigonometrical survey, and penetrating val- 24 THE IVORY “KING. leys in tracing roads, and opening means of communication, —one, too, who has made the habits of the wild elephant a sub- ject of constant study and observation, — has often expressed to me his astonishment that, after seeing many thousands of living elephants in all possible situations, he had never yet found a single skeleton of a dead one, except those which ~ had fallen by a rifle.” The Singhalese have a superstition in relation to the close of life in the elephant. They believe that, on feeling the approach of dissolution, he repairs to a solitary valley, and there resigns himself to death. A native who accompanied Mr. Cripps, when hunting in the forests of Anaraéjapoora, intimated to him that he was then in the immecliate vicinity of the spot “to which the elephants come to die,” but that it was so mysteriously concealed, that, although every one believed in its existence, no one had ever succeeded in penetrating it. At the corral of Kornegalle in 1847, one of the Kandyan chiefs assured him that it was the universal belief of his countrymen, that the elephants, when about to die, resorted to a valley in an unknown spot among the mountains to the east of Adams Peak, which was reached by a narrow pass with walls of rock on each side, and that here, by the side of a lake of clear water, they took their last repose. While this belief is held by some natives of Continental India, there is not a spot in the elephant country that has not been penetrated by either Europeans or natives; yet the latter are not convinced, and the mystery as to what becomes of the dead elephants is as deep as ever. The elephants that die in captivity are victims to the same troubles that affect all animals, and the wild elephant is probably no exception. At the commissariat at Bengal, one hundred and fourteen elephants died in 1874-75. HABITS AND WAYS OF ELEPHANTS. 25 Eleven died of apoplexy, three of dysentery, five of inflam- mation of the lungs, thirteen of debility, one of cold, twenty- six of zahirbad, one of vomiting, three of colic, and one of congestion of the brain,—abundant proof to the supersti- tious native that the elephant is susceptible to dissolution. Ceylon elephants are remarkable for the numbers born with- out tusks. These are called mucknas, and differ in no other respect from the elephants’ of Continental India. They resemble ordinary females; the tusks being extremely small, and useless as defence. Sometimes they are larger than ordinary tuskers; but this may be mere accident, as is their dental defect, and it is not an hereditary trait. So rare is a good tusker in Ceylon, that one is looked upon as a curiosity. Sir Samuel Baker states that not over one in three hundred possessed them; and to show the difference between these and the continental elephant, out of one hundred and forty, fifty-one of which were males, captured by Mr. Sanderson in Mysore, Bengal, in 1874-76, only five were mucknas, or tusk- less. We should expect to find theories at least to explain this strange difference in an adjoining country, where the cli- mate and food conditions are almost identical (the food in Ceylon is easier to obtain); but I am not aware that any of importance have been expressed. As large and powerful as the elephant is, it is easily dis- mayed and alarmed; and many have an especial aversion to small animals. Thus, some elephants have a great dislike for small dogs; and a mouse has been known to cause a large tusker to snort with fear. Wild hogs are particularly dis- agreeable to the great animals, and it appears that this was known to the ancients; as Procopius, the historian of the Persian and Gothic wars, states that at the siege of Edessa 26 THE IVORY KING. by Chosroes, the king of Persia, in the time of Justinian, the besieged Greeks imitated the cry of the pig to frighten the elephants of the enemy. In fact, elephants are like other animals. They have their likes and dislikes; and their alarm at a mouse, in justice to some of the human race, should not be used, as it often is, as an argument in proof of their supposed cowardice and lack of intelligence. THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE ELEPHANT. 27 CHAPTER ITI. THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE ELEPHANT. N determining the intelligence of an animal, we naturally take ourselves as the type of mental excellence, and grade the lower animals as they approach us. Some would place : the ant next to man, arguing that it more closely resem- bles him in its habits, customs, and methods of showing what we consider the result of intelligent action. It keeps domestic animals (apfzs), goes to war in organized bodies, makes slaves of other insects, erects wonderful structures, is accredited with planting seeds, and certainly stores them up after arranging them so that they cannot sprout; in fact, appears to act in many ways like a rational human being: and, contrasted to it, the elephant, dog, horse, and beaver would seem to be comparatively stupid animals; at least, such would be the verdict of the observer who mistakes instinct for reason. Such a comparison seems unfair to the other animals mentioned; and to argue that the ele- phant is not as intelligent as the ant because it does not build a house, and lay up a food-supply, would hardly be just, as the great proboscidian does not require such shel- ter: and, without instancing any more examples, it would appear, that, to establish the relative intelligence of an animal, it should be judged, not especially by the standard 28 THE IVORY KING. of another, but according to its displayal of what we term thought; and this leads us to consider how thought may be exhibited in an animal. Instinctive action is some- thing that is done without appreciable thought: thus, a colt instinctively kicks at an enemy, as a kitten spits at a dog. The fear of this animal has been present in all the generations of cats, and is inherited, as shown by the protest in the curve of the back, the raising of the tail, and other familiar methods of expression. So we may, without multi- plying instances, consider that instinctive action is the out- ward expression of inherited experience, and has practically nothing in common with that action of the mind which we call thought. If this kitten when it grows older,—and I know of an instance,—should without instruction climb upon a door, and lift the latch, she would be exhibiting a practical illustration of the results of thought: in other words, she would lift the latch because she knew that the door could not be opened without it, and consequently had, in her feline mind, turned over to some extent the relations that existed between the latch, the door, and the object she had in view. So if the colt should go to a pump, as a cow is alleged to have done, and take the handle in its mouth without being taught, and pump water to drink, it would show that the animal had used its powers of thought. Now, what position does the elephant take in the scale of intelli- gence ? The Hindoos of the present day do not consider the elephant a remarkably intelligent animal. Yet at one time its sagacity was certainly appreciated, as the Hindoo god of wisdom is figured with the body of a man and the head of an elephant; and A. W. Schlegel states that in very early times THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE ELEPHANT. 29 they marvelled at every thing about the animal, especially its sagacity, which made it seem to them the embodiment of the god Ganessa. Probably Dr. Dalton expresses the latest knowledge touch- ing this subject. He says, — “Tf we examine the comparative development of the hemi- spheres of the brain in different species of animals, and in different races of men, we shall find that the size of these ganglia corresponds very closely with the degree of intelli- gence possessed by the individual. . . . Among quadrupeds, the elephant has much the largest, and most perfectly formed, cerebrum, in proportion to the size of the entire body; and, — of all quadrupeds, he is proverbially the most intelligent and the most teachable. It is important to observe, in this connection, that the kind of intelligence which characterizes the elephant and some other of the lower animals, and which most nearly resembles that of man, is a teachable intelligence, —a very different thing from the intelligence which depends upon instinct, such as that of insects, for example, or birds of passage.” In a previous chapter I mentioned that Mr. H. H. Cross informed me that he had seen an elephant of the Barnum herd select a stick, and probe the small orifice in the temple. Since then I have seen a statement by Mr. Cross in print, to the effect that he has seen the elephant select a twig, examine it carefully with one of its keen little eyes, by holding it up in its trunk, and, if it found it was not sharp enough for the purpose, deliberately grind down the point by rubbing it upon a stone, and, when its shape suited him, use it to open the orifice. In Africa, according to Drummond, the wild elephants 30 THE IVORY BiXG. migrate south in time for certain fruits, which shows that they must remember the pleasures of the past season. The migration is not suggested by a lack of food, as the supply of mimosa and other trees does not give out. When a wild elephant takes a branch in its trunk, and uses it to brush away flies, it shows more intelligence than it is generally given credit for; while its lodging dust and sand on its back to prevent the attack of these pests, is also to be considered an intelligent act. Elephants are extremely cautious, and. this has been used as an argument against their intelligence. Sanderson says that the animal is stupid because the simplest fence is often sufficient to protect grain from them; but I am inclined to think that this is owing to their extreme caution: the fence may have in their mind some association with the pitfall, or traps of some kind, which have been met in their experience. An elephant will rarely step upon a bridge that is not safe, and many instances could be cited showing that their protests and objections were founded upon an intelligent appreciation of danger. Sanderson says also that the elephant lacks originality : but the two instances [ have mentioned, —namely, using a branch to brush off flies, and sharpening the stick, — will, I think, in the opinion of my young readers, free the great animal from this imputation ; and I do not recall many actions performed by wild animals, that show more appreciation of the practical application of cause and effect. The intelligence of the elephant has been a subject of varied appreciation. Many observers have con- sidered remarkable actions of elephants involuntary, when in truth they were merely obeying the commands of their riders or mahouts, who expressed their wishes by the press- ure of their legs, or by the voice, which was not seen or Wu A\Wily i) Y,) ry Ah si fay uN yell f | iy ; | ) N | i ih: ‘il! | { YR LN THE SIBERIAN MAMMOTH, Page 39. [By courtesy of Ward & Howell, Rochester, N. V. ‘| —/dcet ae wa Oe 4 ite THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE ELEPHANT. 31 heard by the observer. When Tavernier was travelling with the Mahommedan army of the Mogul, he was astonished to see the elephants seize the little images which stood before the pagodas, and dash them to the ground. The Hindoos readily believed that the elephant did this from a religious aversion to the idols, but the traveller knew that the mahouts were secretly directing the great animals. So, in passing in review before the king, the elephants did not salute until coming to his majesty. Once when two elephants were at a spring, the largest violently seized a bucket carried by the smaller, and began to _ dip up water; upon which the other elephant drew back, and —————— —————— : | butted its companion so that it fell headlong into the pool. This story is told to illustrate the revengeful nature of the ~ animal, when, in point of fact, the entire action was insti- gated by the mahout upon its back. The most remarkable trait of the elephant is its obedience: and if we were to take its aptitude to learn the tasks described in the chapter on trained elephants, as a test of intelligence, it would certainly hold its own among all animals; as, considering that it is perhaps the most ungainly, and certainly the heaviest, of all land animals, its various feats are indeed remarkable. © At the slightest pressure of its rider’s foot it will salute, lift the trunk in the air, and trumpet loudly ; stop, back, lie down to enable the mahout to dismount, roll over, lift the man upon its trunk, pass over his body with the greatest ease, lift stones from the ground for the driver to throw at other elephants, and even tie itself up at night; in fact, among all trained animals, dogs, horses, or birds, none com- pare with the elephant in their obedience, and intelligent appreciation of what is required. ‘Though playing ’possum ”’ 32 | THE IVORY KING. or feigning death can hardly be cited as an evidence of intel- ligence, it may be interesting to know that it is sometimes attempted by elephants. Sir Emerson Tennent was _ in- formed by Mr. Cripps that he was aware of an instance where an elephant adopted this ruse to secure its freedom. It had been led into a corral between two tame elephants, and upon being released sank to the ground apparently life- less. Every attempt to revive it, or force it to show any evidence of life, failed; and the natives believed that it had died of a broken heart, —a term that they often apply when an elephant dies without apparent cause. Finally the body was abandoned as lifeless; and, as soon as the hunters had gone a short distance, the wily brute regained its feet, and rushed for the jungle, screaming at the top of its voice; its cries of evident delight being heard long after it had dis- appeared. In the various chapters of this work, other in- stances have been cited showing that, far from being a stupid animal, the elephant in its wld state exhibits far more intel- ligence than the wild dog or horse; and when we compare the animals after their so-called education, there is little that the trained dog can do that is not accomplished by the ele- phant; and while it is difficult to draw exact lines, and point out the exact mental status of the elephant in the rank and file of the lower animals, I would place it well to the front among mammals. | I am glad to be able to bring to the support of my belief in the superior intelligence of the elephant, the testimony of a naturalist and careful observer, Col. Nicholas Pike, late consul at Mauritius, whose extensive travels and long resi- dence in the East render his opinions of especial value and interest. The following is Col. Pike’s letter in answer THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE ELEPHANT. 338 to my request for an expression of his opinion upon the subject : — Mr. C. F. Houper. My dear Sir, — In answer to your questions as to my opinion relative to the intelligence of the elephant, I will jot down a few notes that may interest you. This animal is to my mind one of the most intelligent of the brute creation. I am led to this conclusion from what I have actually seen, and from reliable information given me by persons who have devoted a lifetime to studying their habits and life-history generally. I think that in elephants, as in other animals, — and we see even in man himself, — there is a great difference in the amount of intelligence they possess. A friend of mine, who owned many of these animals, placed an old tame male that appeared sick, in a pasture, where he had also some horses and sheep feeding, thinking it would recuperate “ Dick,” who was a great favorite. The whole pasture was well fenced in, and the gate was securely bolted. One morning when I was visiting my friend, we were surprised to see “ Dick” let himself in by the back-gate; and he warned us of his presence by trumpeting. His master went to him, and asked what he wanted. The beast. at once took up a pitcher containing water which was near by, and poured some of it on the ground, attempting to sip a few drops of it with his trunk. His master, seeing what he wanted, gave him water, and told him to go back. Thinking the gate must have been left open, and perhaps the sheep and horses straying out, we followed, but to our surprise found the gate shut, and not only bolted, but the bolt turned up in the little slot so that it shouid not be easily opened. We waited, curious to see what Dick would do. As soon as he reached the gate, he deliberately moved the bolt, and passed into the field, then turn- ing round, he re-adjusted the bolt as well as I could have done it, and marched off contentedly to a favorite corner under some trees. I have seen my friend quietly call individuals by their name out of the herd; and in one instance, a female, “ Maggie,” was called, and told to take me on her back, which she did, helping me up carefully with her trunk. I have seen an elephant draw a cork from a bottle of claret, and drink the contents without spilling a drop. I saw four or five called 34 THE IVORY KING. : Li singly by name from their grazing-ground, form in line, and bow, and kneel before a group of ladies, and then march back in as regular order at the word of command as a file of soldiers. Hundreds of elephants are employed in the government service in the three presidencies of India, — Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. They go through a regular routine, and know their hours for work and recreation as well as the man who watches the clock. When the bell sounds in the morning, they take up their line of march, to the lumber-yards for in- stance, where vast piles of beams and planks are stored. As soon as they arrive, each takes up his work, left from the day before. Great logs and beams are rolled along by the aid of the trunk, and, when near the pile, are lifted, two elephants to each beam, and hoisted into place, when they walk round and adjust their work with as much precision as a man would use with a plumb-line. When the usual hour for quitting work arrives, nothing can induce the creatures to go on; and you can’t fool them on the time either, by ringing the bell late. Off they go to get their afternoon bath, where they will lie and wallow in the muddy water for hours. Their varied works require cute intelligence, not mere instinct, any more than you can attribute the good paving of a roadway by a poor laborer, who knows his business, though he may not be able to read or write, to instinct. : A circumstance was related to me by my friend, Gen. E. W. de Lan- sing Lowe, who was all through the campaign in India during the Sepoy rebellion. He said he had a very intelligent elephant that he constantly rode on, and as it was so hot they mostly travelled morning and evening. During the war, they came about the dusk of evening to a small bridge that spanned a deep ravine with water at the bottom. As soon as the elephant came to this bridge, no inducement could make him cross it. After some delay, finding all persuasion useless, the general determined to examine the structure. They found the enemy had cut away the sup- ports of the bridge; and, had the elephant stepped on to it, the whole party would have been precipitated into the gulf below. We have a notable instance of the sagacity of these animals at the time Barnum’s circus was in Bridgeport a few years ago. A fire broke out in some sheds adjoining the tents, and it was feared the stables would catch the flames. They began to pull down the sheds, when some one THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE ELEPHANT. 35 suggested to bring out two elephants. This was done, and the animals set to with a will to pull down the place. They evidently at once took in the situation. They not only tore down the place, but threw the tim- bers so that they should not touch the tents, and beat out the flames. Now, if this does not show almost human reason, what does? They were put to the work on the spur of the moment, and not only performed it as if used to it, but actually did it more intelligently than many men would have done in such perilous circumstances. Had they not done so, as water was short, the loss of life to man and beast, and of property, might have been enormous. If you could only interview Barnum, he could tell you more of the intelligence of the elephant than any man living. I could relate numerous other incidents I have seen and been informed of ; but enough has been said, I think, to prove how highly I think of the intelligence, sagacity, or whatever other name you may give it, of this unwieldly pachyderm.} NICHOLAS PIKE. 1 See Plate II. for a view of elephant moving timber. 36 | THE IVORY KING. CHAPTER IV. THE MAMMOTH. N one of the old Chinese histories, there is a description of a curious creature called tyn-schu, supposed to be a subterranean, rat-like animal. It lived, according to the old chroniclers, entirely beneath the ground; was as large as an ox; and had enormous tusks, with which it threw up the soil, or made its burrows; and the rumbling of earthquakes was attributed to them. This was naturally considered a fable by Europeans, but finally an English traveller was shown a piece of the tusk. He found it to be ivory, and suspected that the strange animal was a mammoth, as indeed was the case. The bodies of these elephantine giants were found in the far North, buried in the tundra; and the simple Chinamen believed that they lived there, and on their return from trading-trips told the story in the South; and thus it became a part of their curious and, it is needless to say, erroneous history. : The mammoth may rightly be considered the king of all elephants, and in general appearance it much resembled the © African species. The full adult may have been a third more bulky than the largest existing elephants, and undoubtedly weighed at least twice as much. To protect them from the cold, they were covered with hair, which gave them a fero- EAU 1 Ny 4 Mh =~. MAMMOTH HUNT. Page 36. Stile td aie Ue pa peremegtiancs) oer ‘ ee ee ee ne » a prs nhl a ee. ee ee eS ey eS ee ee et ee! ee ee THE MAMMOTH. oT cious appearance. ‘The hair was of three kinds: first there was a thick coat of reddish wool; over this grew a coat of long, thick hair; while upon the neck was a heavy mane. The tusks of the mammoth were enormous: some measured thirteen feet in length; and, curved in a circle, gave the animal a strange and formidable appearance. While the mammoth greatly resembled the African ele- phant, there are some points of difference. The skull is narrower at the summit, and the molar teeth have great breadth of crown as compared to the length: the ridges also are narrow and crowded, while the enamel is thin and straight, the crimping that is seen in others being absent. The molars number, as in other elephants, eight, at one time present; or, one and a portion of another one each side of both jaws. This huge elephant flourished principally in the far North; and, as its remains are now found in the greatest abundance on the shores of the Arctic Sea, it must have existed in vast herds. The majority of specimens discovered are buried in the soil, that is now frozen the year round in a solid mass for many feet. The finest specimen known is a skeleton in the museum at St. Petersburg; the original having been discovered in 1799 by a poor fisherman named Schumachoff, a Tongoose, who every spring followed down the Lena River ' that led into the Arctic Sea. One day while engaged in fol- lowing his vocation, he observed on the side of a tundra a _ shapeless mass, appearing like some huge monster entombed. The following year he returned to the same locality, and q found that the object had weathered out still more, and was _ a mammoth —a veritable frozen giant. Still, he could not _ Claim the fine tusks; and another year passed, and then his 38 THE IVORY KING. family were so superstitious that they refused to consent to his again visiting the strange animal that he had described. But finally, five years after his first trip, he determined to again visit the scene of his discovery. He sailed down the river in his small boat, and, with mingled emotions of fear and curiosity, approached the imprisoned monster. Raising his eyes on reaching the spot, he saw a great cavity in the cliff, but the mammoth was gone. The ice had melted away, but beneath where the giant had rested lay the enormous body. The tusks were still intact ; and Schumachoff carried them South in triumph, where he realized fifty rubles from the sale, leaving the body — which, wonderful to relate, was as fresh as if the animal had died only a week before — to the bears and wolves. | We could hardly expect a poor fisherman to know that it was a valuable scientific discovery, and it was only by accident that the story of the strange animal reached the scientific world. Seven years later a Mr. Adams visited the spot, where he found the mammoth still in the flesh, with the ex- ception of the fore-leg; and, even after this lapse of time, its preservation was remarkable. The pupil of the eye was still intact; and the brain rested in the cranium, the tissues being so perfect that they could hardly be distinguished from those of a living animal. During the interim between its fall upon the beach and Mr. Adams’s visit, it had attracted numbers of wild animals, — bears, foxes, etc., —that devoured much of the meat, that had been preserved for perhaps thousands of years. The neck of the animal was still covered with a long mane; and next to the skin was a thick brown wool, that. was evi- dently very valuable as a protection against the severe cold. Much of the hair and wool of the huge creature was ground —_—_— lle : I, on TO LL a a a a oe ys THE MAMMOTH. ee into the soil, but thirty pounds of this reddish wool was recovered. Mr. Adams purchased the tusks, which were nine feet in length; and finally the entire skeleton was removed to St. Petersburg, where it may still be seen. From the description and measurements of the skeleton, Professor Ward has made a restoration of this ancient giant, which gives a striking idea of the grandeur of its appearance. (See Plate III.) Dr. Pallas was the first to describe the mammoth with scientific accuracy; and Biumenbach gave it its present name, Hlephas primigenius. In the northern countries it ranged the forests at one time in vast numbers, being espe- cially common in England and Wales, where its remains are generally found in caves and river-deposits. In Yorkshire and Wales it was evidently followed by hyenas, that dragged its bones into the caves. W. Boyd Dawkins says, that, in the spring of 1866, he accompanied Mr. Antonio Brady to the Uphall pit, England, and describes his finds as follows: — “ At the top, there was the surface-soil from one to three feet deep; then an irregularly stratified layer of brick-earth and gravel six feet; and lastly, an irregular layer of flint eravel, underneath which was a fine reddish gray sandy loam, four feet thick. All these had been cleared away, leaving a platform exposed, on which was a most remarkable accu- mulation of bones carefully left 7m situ by the workmen. On the right hand was a huge tusk of mammoth, eight feet long, with the spiral curvature undisturbed by the pressure of the superadjacent strata. Across it lay a remarkably fine antler of red deer. Ata little distance was the frontal por- tion of the skull of a urus, with its horn-cores perfect to the very tips; while around, bones of various animals were scat- 40) THE IVORY KING. tered, —of the Rhinoceros hemitechus, mammoth, urus, horse, either brown or grisly bear, and wolf. As we gazed down on this tableau, we could not doubt for a moment that the bottom of an ancient river with all its contents lay before our eyes,—a river in which all these animals: had been drowned, and by which they had been swept into the exact position which they then occupied. This inference was con- firmed by the examination of the thin layer of sandy gravel on which they rested, for it was full of the shells of Corbie- ula fluminalis, with the valves together just as in life. There were also specimens of the common anodon of our rivers, and of the Helix nemoralis of our hedge-rows. Ona continuation of the same platform, now cut away, the skull of a mammoth was discovered in 1864, perfect, with the exception of the tusks, which had been broken away, with their incisive alveoli. That of the right side lay twenty feet away from the skull, while the left has not yet been discoy- ered. Owing to the surprising skill of Mr. Davies, the skull and tusk were taken up and re-united, and now constitute by far the finest specimen of mammoth in the British Museum. In some cases, the mammoth remains have not been deposited by a river. At Lexden, near Colchester, as the Rev. O. Fisher well observes, they were overwhelmed in a bog, the small bones of the feet being found in their natural position, a fact which shows that they sank feet foremost through the peat into the subjacent clay.” That the sea has greatly encroached upon the land of England, and that the old grazing-grounds of the mammoth are now under water, is evident from the fact that the teeth of elephants are often dredged up by fishermen; and ivory- hunters in some localities have literally fished for these teeth THE MAMMOTH. 41 with drag-nets. A tusk dredged at Scarborough was as fresh as when the animal was alive, and was cut up and used for the various purposes to which ivory is put. In its day, the mammoth also wandered through the forests of France, and to the south as far as Rome. Portions of its skeleton have been found in the volcanic gravel of Ponte Molle and Monte Sacro, a fact showing that it flourished here when the site of Rome was a bed of lava that flowed from the volcanoes of Central Italy. Germany was a famous grazing-ground for the mammoth. At Seilberg near Constadt on the Necker, a heap of thirteen tusks and teeth were found “ heaped close upon each other,” as if they had been packed artificially. A like find was made in the village of Thiede, four miles south of Bruns- wick: in a heap of soil ten feet square, there were found eleven tusks, one eleven and another fourteen and three- quarters feet long ; thirty molar teeth, and numbers of large bones; “mixed with these were the bones and teeth of rhi- noceros, horse, ox, and stag; they all lay mixed confusedly together; none of them were rolled or much broken; and the teeth, for the most part, separate and without the jaws: there were also some horns of stag.” The borders of the Arctic were, however, the favorite pasturage for these giants; and the store of ivory there may be said to be practically inexhaustible, though the trade in the tusks has been going on with the Jakuti and Tungusians from time immemorial. The Siberian islands are a favorite locality for collectors, where the tusks have been found protruding from the sand in vast numbers. After Adams, the most valuable find was made by Dr. Middendorf, a famous Siberian explorer, in 42 THE IVORY KING. 1843. It was discovered in latitude 66° 30’, between the Obi f and Yeuesei, near the Arctic circle. Shortly after, the body f of a young one was found in a bed of sand and gravel fifteen feet or so above the sea, near the river Taimyr; and in the former the eye was so perfectly preserved, that the bulb, now in the St. Petersburg museum, looks as though it had - been taken from a recent animal. 3 One of the most interesting mammoth discoveries in late years was made by a young Russian engineer named Ben- kendorf, who was employed in 1846 by the government to — survey the coast off the mouth of the Lena and Indigirka rivers. The discovery is of such great interest and value, that I give it in his own words, the account being an abstract from a letter written to a friend in Germany : — “In 1846 there was unusually warm weather in the north of Siberia. Already in May unusual rains poured over the moors and bogs, storms shook the earth, and the streams carried not only ice to the sea, but also large tracts of land thawed by the masses of warm water fed by the southern rains. ... We steamed on the first favorable day up the Indigirka, but there were no thoughts of land: we saw around us only a sea of dirty brown water, and knew the river only by the rushing and roaring of the stream. The river rolled against us trees, moss, and large masses of peat, so that it was only with great trouble and danger that we could proceed. At the end of the second day, we were only about forty wersts up the stream. Some one had to stand with the sounding-rod in hand continually, and the boat received so many shocks that it shuddered to the keel. A wooden vessel would have been smashed. Around us we saw nothing but the flooded land. For eight days we met THE MAMMOTH. 43 with the like hinderances, until at last we reached the place where our Jakuti were to have met us. Farther up was a place called Ujandina, whence the people were to have come to us; but they were not there, prevented evidently by the floods. As we had been here in former years, we knew the place. But howit had changed! The Indigirka, here about three wersts wide, had torn up the land, and worn itself a fresh channel; and, when the waters sank, we saw, to our astonishment, that the old river-bed had become merely that of an insignificant stream. ‘This allowed me to cut through the soft earth; and we went reconnoitring up the new stream, which had worn its way westward. Afterwards we landed on the new shore, and surveyed the undermining and destruc- tive operation of the wild waters, that carried away, with extraordinary rapidity, masses of soft peat and loam. It was then that we made a wonderful discovery. The land on which we were treading was moorland, covered thickly with young plants. Many lovely flowers rejoiced the eye in the . warm beams of the sun, that shone for twenty-two out of the twenty-four hours. The stream rolled over, and tore up the soft, wet ground like chaff: so that it was dangerous to go near the brink. While we were all quiet, we suddenly heard under our feet a sudden gurgling and stirring, which betrayed the working of the disturbed water. Suddenly our jager, ever on the lookout, called loudly, and pointed to a singular and unshapely object, which rose and sank through the disturbed waters. I had already remarked it, but not given it any attention, considering it only drift-wood. Now we all hastened to the spot on the shore, had the boat drawn near, and waited until the mysterious thing should again show itself. Our patience was tried: but at last, a black, sy +4 THE IVORY KING. . horrible, giant-like mass was thrust out of the water; and we beheld a colossal elephant’s head, armed with mighty tusks, with its long trunk moving in the water in an unearthly man- ner, as though seeking for something lost therein. Breathless with astonishment, I beheld the monster hardly twelve feet from me, with his half-open eyes yet showing the whites. It was still in good preservation. | «¢ A mammoth! a mammoth!’ broke out the Tschernomori; and I shouted, ‘Here, quickly! chains and ropes!’ I will go over our preparations for securing the giant animal, whose body the water was trying to tear from us. As the animal again sank, we waited for an opportunity to throw the ropes over his neck. This was only accomplished after many efforts. For the rest we had no cause for anxiety ; for, after examining the ground, I satisfied myself that the hind-legs of the mammoth still stuck in the earth, and that the waters would work for us to unloosen them. We therefore fastened a rope round his neck, threw a chain round his tusks, that were eight feet long, drove a stake into the ground about twenty feet from the shore, and made chain and rope fast to it. The day went by quicker than I thought for; but still, the time seemed long before the animal was secured, as it was only after the lapse of twenty-four hours that the water had loosened it. But the position of the animal was inter- esting to me: it was standing in the earth, and not lying on its side or back as a dead animal naturally would, indicating, by this, the manner of its destruction. The soft peat or marsh land, on which he stepped thousands of years ago, gave way under the weight of the giant; and he sank as he stood on it, feet foremost, incapable of saving himself; and a severe frost came, and turned him into ice and the moor THE MAMMOTH. 45 which had buried him. The latter, however, grew and flour- ished, every summer renewing itself. Possibly the neighbor- ing stream had heaped over the dead body plants and sand. God only knows what causes had worked for its preservation. Now, however, the stream had brought it once more to the light of day; and I, an ephemera of life compared with this primeval giant, was sent here by Heaven just at the right time to welcome him. You can imagine how I jumped for joy. “During our evening meal, our posts announced strangers: a troop of Jakuti came on their fast, shaggy horses; they were our appointed people, and were very joyful at sight of us. Our company was augmented by them to about fifty persons. On showing them our wonderful capture, they hastened to the stream; and it was amusing to hear how they chattered and talked over the sight. The first day I left them in quiet possession; but when, on the following, the ropes and chains gave a great jerk, a sign that the mam- moth was quite freed from the earth, I commanded them to use their utmost strength, and bring the beast to land. At length, after much hard work, in which the horses were extremely useful, the animal was brought to land; and we were able to roll the body about twelve feet from the shore. The decomposing effect of the warm air filled us all with astonishment. “ Picture to yourself an elephant with a body covered with thick fur, about thirteen feet in height, and fifteen in length, with tusks eight feet long, thick, and curving outward at their ends, a stout trunk of six feet in length, colossal limbs of one and a half feet in thickness, and a tail, naked up to the end, which was covered with thick, tufty hair. The 46 THE IVORY KING. animal was fat, and well grown. Death had overtaken him in the fulness of his powers. His parchment-like, large, naked ears lay fearfully turned up over the head. About the shoulders and the back he had stiff hair, about a foot in length, like a mane. The long, outer hair was deep brown, and coarsely rooted. ‘The top of the head looked so wild, and so penetrated with pitch (und mit Pech so durchgedrung- en), that it resembled the rind of an old oak-tree. On the sides it was cleaner (7e¢ner) ; and under the outer hair, there appeared everywhere a wool, very soft, warm, and thick, and of a fallow-brown color. The giant was well protected against the cold. The whole appearance of the animal was fearfully strange and wild. It had not the shape of our present elephants. As compared with our Indian elephants, its head was rough, the brain-case low and narrow, but the trunk and mouth were much larger. The teeth were very powerful. Our elephant is an awkward animal; but, com- pared with this mammoth, it is as an Arabian steed to a coarse, ugly dray-horse. I could not divest myself of a feel- ing of fear as I approached the head. The broken, widely open eyes gave the animal an appearance of life, as though it might move in a moment, and destroy us with a roar... . The bad smell of the body warned us that it was time to save of it what we could; and the swelling flood, too, bid us hasten. First of all, we cut off the tusks, and sent them to the cutter. Then the people tried to hew the head off; but, notwithstanding their good will, this was slow work. As the belly of the animal was cut open, the intestines rolled out; and then the smell was so dreadful, that I could not overcome my nauseousness, and was obliged to turn away. But I had the stomach separated, and brought on one side. THE MAMMOTH. 47 It was well filled, and the contents instructive and well pre- served. The principal were young shoots of the fir and pine: a quantity of young fir-cones, also in a chewed state, were mixed with the mass. . . . As we were eviscerating the animal, I was as careless and forgetful as my Jakuti, who did not notice that the ground was sinking under their feet, until a fearful scream warned me of their misfortune, as I was still groping in the animal’s stomach. Shocked, I sprang up, and beheld how the river was burying in its waves our five Jakuti and our laboriously saved beast. Fortunately the boat was near, so that our poor work-people were all saved; but the mammoth was idiomas up by the waves, and never more made its appearance.” This mammoth had undoubtedly strayed into a morass, and been ingulfed; and soon after, or before the body had an opportunity to decay, it had frozen up, to be released again ages after by an unusual thaw. | The most recent mammoth-hunt has been made by Dr. Bunge, who instituted a search along the Lena delta, finding, I believe, but one specimen, which was without its head and one fore-leg. It had been exposed for ten years to the attack of foxes, native dogs, and the natives themselves, and was well-nigh ruined. The mammoth was not confined to the Old World. Vast quantities of bones have been found in Escholtz Bay in a peaty deposit that rests on a chif of pure blue ice, and in various parts of America. As to the causes that led to its extinction, they are equally problematical. In Kentucky, Ohio, and Central North America, there would seem to have been every thing to favor its continuance, — an abundance of food, and vast areas to range upon. The one agency that 2 ame THE IVORY KING. might have produced its extermination is the one now at — work upon its ally in Africa, namely, man. ‘There is little doubt that the early Americans chased the great animal, and, hunted from one part of the country to andther, they finally entirely disappeared. _ = Zi LE <= GI = See a ar isn =—. : => —7 i a the PETERSBURG MUSEUM. ST. Page 48. EXTINCT ELEPHANT, OR MAMMOTH. SKELETON OF ASIATIC ELEPHANT. ASIATIC ELEPHANT. yf +. ae Sate ” 4 f y , - . ‘ ’ Pad , ‘7 4 * a .* Ae .> #\ iG i ‘ “ ‘ a é™ lus ! ! - , * Rtg i ; . ‘ ( ‘ ed | wv ay THREE AND FOUR TUSKED ELEPHANTS. 49 CHAPTER V. THREE AND FOUR TUSKED ELEPHANTS. HOUGH to-day we look to Asia and Africa for elephants, and consider the huge proboscidians as extremely un- American, they originally roamed this country in vast herds, and were as common on our plains and prairies as are many animals of the present day. The mastodon, in the estima- tion of many naturalists, existed up to five hundred years ago; and, judging from the apparent freshness of the remains, there is no great objection to the belief. They were undoubt- edly hunted by the ancestors of the mound-builders and early tribes; and, while other agencies may have aided in their extermination, the aboriginal hunter was an all-powerful factor, the result being no more remarkable than that going on at present in the extermination of the bison. What sights the early American boys and girls must have witnessed, assuming this to have been the case! The mighty masto- dons, with their huge bodies and pillar-like legs, presented a far more impressive spectacle than the largest elephant of to-day ; and when a captive giant was brought in, or found mired in a bog, what shouts and cries arose from these chil- dren, perhaps, of the mound-builders! The tusks of the mastodon were marvels of beauty. Those of some species were straight, turning only at the tips: others 50 THE IVORY KING. had three tusks, two in the upper jaw, and one in the lower, the latter ordinarily of small size, though occasionally they attained large dimensions. Some individuals had four of these ivory weapons, giving them a strange and ferocious appearance. The discovery that mastodons existed in America at one time, was made over a hundred years ago. In 1714 Dr. Cotton Mather of Boston forwarded a paper to the Royal Society of London, describing some mastodon bones, and endeavoring to prove that they were those of some giant — mentioned in Holy Writ. The mastodon he referred to was discovered near Albany in 1705; and some of the grinders, or teeth, weighed four pounds. Thirty-five years later, a French officer, named Longueil, while travelling through what is now the State of Ohio, found near the Ohio River in a swamp a number of bones and tusks. Some of these were carried to Paris. In 1763 Mr. George Croghan, an Englishman, made a valuable find of mastodon remains near the celebrated Big Bone Lick of Kentucky. It was esti- mated that the finds represented the remains of thirty indi- viduals. Some of the tusks which were found about six feet from the surface were seven feet in length. The next important discovery was made on the Wallkill River, about seventy miles from New York, by the Rey. Robert Annan. The bones were found in digging a ditch; and, from their position, it was evident that the huge animal had died standing, or had been mired, and so met its death. In 1805 Bishop Madison of Virginia communicated to “The Scientific World” the discovery of some mastodon bones that were found about five feet beneath the ground. This find was extremely interesting and valuable; as with the body, or THREE AND FOUR TUSKED ELEPHANTS. 51 in a position which represented the stomach of one of the skeletons, was found a mass of ground and bruised vegeta- tion, which upon analysis showed that it was made up of erass, shrubs, and leaves, and of a species of rose still grow- ing in Virginia. The Indians, who, it seems, made the dis- covery, stated that among these there was one that flesh still adhered to, and that it had a long nose. i Quite a number of Indian tribes have traditions concerning animals with a long nose, or trunk. The most familiar is that of the Delaware tribe, and the following is the statement that the natives claim to have been handed down by their ancestors: “That in ancient times a herd of these tremen- dous animals came to the Big Bone Licks, and began a universal destruction of the bear, deer, elks, buffaloes, and other animals, which had been created for the use of the Indians ; that the Great Man above, looking down, and see- ing this, was so enraged that he seized his lightning, descended on the earth, seated himself on a neighboring mountain on a rock, on which his seat and the print of his feet are still to be seen, and hurled his bolts among them till the whole were slaughtered, except the big bull, who, presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook them off as they fell; but, missing one at length, it wounded him in the side; whereon, springing round, he bounded over the Ohio, over the Wabash, the Ilinois, and finally over the Great Lakes, where he is living at this day.” | Mastodon tusks and remains have been unearthed in various parts of the State of California, showing that the huge elephants roamed over the entire continent just as the African elephant originally did on that continent. In Cali- fornia the remains of the mastodon have been found associ- 59 THE IVORY KING. ated with human bones, stone implements, the remains of the elephant, tapir, bison, and modern horse. Mr. Stickney, the well-known Indian agent, states that “ particular persons in every nation were selected as the repositories of their history and traditions; that these persons had others who were younger, selected for this purpose continually, and re- peatedly instructed in those things which were handed down from generation to generation; and that there was a tradi- tion among the Indians of the existence of the mastodon ; that they were often seen; that they fed on the boughs of a species of lime-tree; and that they did not le down, but leaned against a tree to sleep.” Some tribes are familiar with such remains, and call them “fathers of oxen,” and state that they lived long years ago with a race of gigantic men, and that the Great Spirit killed them all with fire-bolts. According to Dr. Barton, in 1761 there were found by Indians in this country five huge carcasses with long noses above their mouths; but this lacks satisfactory proof. In some of the ancient carvings in Mexico and Yucatan, es- pecially those at Palenque, representations of an elephant’s head are to be seen; and it is assumed that the artists must have been acquainted with the animals, or have had some tradition concerning them. Mr. Latrobe relates that “ near the city of Tezcuco, one of the ancient roads or causeways was discovered; and on one side, only three feet below the surface, in what may have been the ditch of the road, there lay the entire skeleton of a mastodon. It bore every ap- pearance of having been coeval with the period when the road was used.” An old Mexican hieroglyphic represents a sacrificing priest with head covered with a casque, in which THREE AND FOUR TUSKED ELEPHANTS. 53 the head of an animal bearing a striking resemblance to the elephant may be seen. ‘The trunk is too distinct and plain to be an accidental resemblance; and the artist did not have the tapir in view when he produced it, the head being decid- edly elephantine. Professor Holmes found the bones of the mastodon associ- ated with pottery on the banks of the Ashley River, near Charleston, §.C.; and, in the majority of these cases, the mas- todon’s remains were discovered very near the surface. Pro- fessor Winchell states that he has himself “seen the bones of the mastodon and elephant embedded in peat, at depths ‘so shallow that he could readily believe the animals to have - occupied the country during its possession by the Indians.” The so-called elephant-mound, referred to in these pages, is considered by some as evidence that the mastodon was a familiar form to the early American; so with the Indian pipes (Plate XVIII.). If they are intended to represent elephants, which one can hardly doubt, the maker must either have seen the mastodon, or have had it accurately described to him. Quite recently some tracks, presumably those of the mastodon or elephant, have been discovered on the surface of a sandstone quarry at Carson City, in Nevada. They represent a series of circular depressions from three to six inches in depth, each about twenty inches in diameter, which, according to the method of measuring the height of elephants in India, would give an elephant ten feet high. The impressions have been traced for forty feet, and show distinct footprints giving a stride of about five feet eight inches. The largest find ever made in this country, with the ex- ception perhaps of the vast collection at the Big Bone Lick, 54 THE IVORY . KING. Kentucky, was that at Warren, N.J., in 1845, where no less than six almost perfect skeletons were found six feet below the surface. A farmer discovered them while digging out | mud from a small swamp; and, as most of the huge creatures were standing upright, it is evident that they became mired in the bog, and slowly sank into it. We can imagine the scene when these six monsters were entrapped, — their trum- peting, their roars of rage and fear, their mighty struggles to escape, that, with their combined weight, only served to mire them deeper and deeper, until they finally disappeared, to remain entombed for untold ages, and to be finally found, and placed in our museums and halls of science as monuments of a lost race. Nearly all the mastodons are found in swamps, showing that possibly these morasses appeared to be veritable traps that hastened the extinction of these monarchs of the forest. This may be considered the popular theory of one method by which mastodons were destroyed: but there is no better authority than Professor James Hall, the present geologist in chief of the State of New York; and his opinions are en- tirely ditterent. His views are, that the extinction of the mastodon was hastened by the glacial period, and that most of the remains discovered have been dropped in hollows or ponds, from the ice perhaps, and the peat formed over them. He advances in favor of this the fact that several tusks have been discovered which show evidences of glacial action. There is such a tusk in the collection of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, worn by supposed glacial action; and Rutgers College has the extremity of a tusk, showing what is considered by Professor Hall to be glacial striae. Referring to the Big Bone Lick, Professor Hall says, THREE AND FOUR TUSKED ELEPHANTS. 55 “ With our present knowledge, it would appear that this ac- cumulation of bones, teeth, and tusks of mastodon, in Ken- tucky, may have been caused by the melting of a glacier in which they had become embedded, and, being gradually pushed forward to its southern limit, had been deposited in this place. There are other similar localities of less impor- tance and extent, where mastodon remains have been ob- tained in considerable numbers; and it is not improbable that a critical examination of all known collections may furnish some further evidence of conditions similar to those indicated by the specimens in the Museums of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences and of Rutgers College. “ However heterodox these views may appear, as opposed to the generally received opinions of the age and relations of the mastodon, I feel quite sure that some other hypothesis than the one usually entertained must be adopted in order to arrive at a satisfactory explanation of the mode and condi- tions of distribution and inhumation of the mastodon and fossil elephant remains of this country. “In advocating this opinion regarding the extermination of the mastodon, I have reference to the remains as they have come under my own observation: and I do not mean to be understood as opposing in toto, the views so generally enter- tained, that the mastodon has existed during the present epoch; or that the opinion held by some of our scientists, that the animal may have existed both before and since the elacial period, is untenable. J refer only to the phenomena usually accompanying these remains, and the conditions at- tending those which have been exhumed within the State of New York and adjacent parts of New Jersey, and to some extent in other parts of the country. The locality of Big 56 THE IVORY KING. Bone Lick in Kentucky, which has furnished the fragmentary parts of so many skeletons (and some other Western locali- ties), I have not visited; but the evidence already given in relation to the bones from this place, indicates very clearly that they had suffered from glacial action; and the animals were, as we infer, of the glacial period.” On the great Osage River, the mastodons were sunk in the mud in a vertical position. Perhaps the most interesting find — in New-York State was what is known as the Cohoes mas- todon. In the fall of 1866 a number of workmen were em- ployed in excavating the foundation for the Harmony Mills Company, in Cohoes; and after much labor, during which several thousand loads of muck or peaty soil, and old trunks of trees, had been removed, one of the men discovered the jaw-bone of some gigantic animal. The bone was found al- most at the water-level, and at a depth of twenty-five feet be- low the surface; the entire locality being clay and earth, which formerly had been filled in to cover a swampy depression. The report of the find was conveyed to Professor James Hall, who immediately undertook the superintendence of the search. He soon saw that the locality had at one time been the bed of the river, and that the remains were evidently in a vast pot-hole,— a circular pit often seen in the rock-borders of rivers at the present day. The discovery of the jaw pointed to the assumption that the entire skeleton could not be far off, and careful search was immediately commenced. Loads of refuse, old trunks of trees showing the imprint of beavers’ teeth, broken slate, water-worn pebbles, were re- moved, and finally, in the bottom of the great pot-hole, upon a mass of material similar to that which had been taken out, covered with river-ooze and vegetable soil, the principal THREE AND FOUR TUSKED ELEPHANTS. 57 parts of the great mastodon were found. First, the bones of the hind-legs appeared, and a portion of the pelvis; and against the sloping wall reclined the massive head with tusks complete, unbroken and undisturbed; then followed many of the other portions of the skeleton, all. lodged in a pot-hole of great depth. Sixty feet were explored without finding bottom ; and the supposition was, that the animal had in some way been caught in a glacier, and gradually melted out as the great mass of ice slowly moved down over the face of the country, dropping it into this natural tomb. This complete skeleton (Plate V.) was presented to the cabinet of the State Museum at Albany, and is now on exhibition there, one of the finest specimens in existence. Its dimensions are as follows: — FT. IN Length in a direct line . . ‘ : : , 4s Length following the curve of the spinal column . 20° 6 Width of the thorax at the seventh rib . , : ot) St gee Elevation of the crest of the scapula. aly 31 ae: : Elevation of the crest of the pelvis paket ‘ aaa ek Elevation of the head . ; : : ‘ oi 2h Mall Elevation of the spine of the second dorsal vertebra . 810 Elevation of the spine of the eighth dorsal vertebra . 9 38 In some of the mastodons found, remains of food have been discovered between the ribs: thus it has been determined that the huge creature existed when the country appeared much as it does to-day. The Mastodon giganteus fed upon the spruce and fir trees. The mastodons wandered over almost every country known, and their remains are very common in South America. Humboldt found them as far north as Santa Fe de Bogota, and they have been discovered 58 THE IVORY KING. as far south as Buenos Ayres. Their range in South America has been given from five degrees north to about thirty-seven degrees south; and they were probably not restricted to this area. : ae Like the elephants of the present day, they wandered to great elevations, even up to the borders of perpetual snow; and a tooth described by Cuvier was obtained by Humboldt, in a voleano, at an elevation of seventy-two hundred feet | above the level of the sea. A fine collection of these South- American mastodons is exhibited in the museum at Santiago. They were found by a party of men in an attempt to drain Lake Tagua in the province of Colchagua, about one hun- dred miles south of Santiago, sixty from the Pacific, and fourteen hundred feet above the sea. , AN WW . . \ tA ALY cl A JUMBO. 73 through the streets; and, according to Mr. Barnum, the superintendent of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals never left the Garden until Jumbo did, awaiting an opportunity, according to the Americans, to use his author- ity in favor of public sentiment. As a last resort, an interim injunction was sworn out before Justice Chilly, restraining the Council of the Zodlogical Society from allowing Jumbo to be removed. But finally it was seen that Jumbo had been purchased fairly; and in the last of March the great elephant was coaxed into its box, and was ultimately hoisted aboard the steamer “ Assyrian Monarch,” and shipped to New York, where he was hauled up Broadway in triumph by six- teen horses and a large crowd who dragged upon ropes at- tached to the wheeled box for the purpose; and from that time to his death became the object of great attention. One never tired looking at this stupendous animal. His enormous size, the pillar-like legs,— columns of support rather than for locomotion, — his stately movements, the pen- dulum-like swinging of his huge trunk, all impressed the observer that Jumbo was indeed the king among all animals, and the most remarkable one ever seen upon this continent. Jumbo continued with the Barnum circus until Sept. 13, 1885, when he met an untimely death in St. Thomas, Canada. The final performance of the circus had been given; and Jumbo and the trick elephant Tom were marching over the track to reach their cars, guided by Scott, the former’s trainer, when a heavy freight-train came rushing along from the east. The headlight was not seen until the train was within five hundred yards of the animals, and was not ex- pected, as the railroad officials had assured the men that a train was not due for an hour. Signals were given as soon 74 THE IVORY KING. as possible, and the brakes were put on; while the elephants | fled up the track, led by Scott, who stood by them to the last: but the heavy train could not be stopped, being on a down grade; and with a thundering roar it came on, striking the clown elephant, and hurling him into a ditch, then crash- ing into the ponderous Jumbo, the contact stopping the train, and derailing the engine and two cars. | The unfortunate Jumbo was struck in the hind-legs; and it is said, as he felt the cow-catcher, he gave a loud roar, turned and fell; the first car passing along his back, and inflicting wounds from which he died in fifteen minutes. Jumbo’s measurements after death were found to be as follows: circumference of the fore-arm, five feet six inches; height, about eleven feet two inches; length of trunk, seven feet four inches; around the tusk, one foot three and a half inches; length of fore-leg, six feet. Mr. Barnum presented the skeleton to the National Museum, and the skin to Tufts College, of Massachusetts, where they will ultimately go. The two gifts were mounted by Professor Ward of Roches- ter, probably the most stupendous piece of taxidermy ever attempted in any country; and, as such, it may be of interest to know something of the methods employed. Professor Ward thus describes his work in a letter to Mr. Barnum: | . “Fortunately, we had one good life-photograph, also many measurements of his body, taken after the sad acci- dent in Canada. The mounting was a matter involving such formidable conditions of weight and size, that no ordi- nary base would serve to support him. His pedestal was first built of heavy oak beams, the crossbars on which he stands being six by nine inches in thickness. In these were planted eight great standards of two-inch iron, —two of JUMBO. 75 them to go through each leg, — which were bolted above into equally heavy cross-beams, which held them together, and strengthened the whole. Other beams ran lengthwise of the body, placed straight, obliquely, diagonally, and in every direction calculated to strengthen and stiffen, and all bound together with rods and bars and bolts. One great beam, reaching from rear part through the body to centre of his forehead, is calculated to sustain fully a ton’s weight, if at any time his great head should need such support. The outlines of his body and legs are then obtained by properly fastening pieces of thick plank on edge, and cutting them to form required. The further final contour of the body is secured by covering these timbers with wooden coating two inches thick, and all built up, cut and chiselled to the exact form desired in every part. Thus was gradually built up an elephant of almost solid wood, of Jumbo’s exact size and form. To this was applied his vast skin, weighing over three-quarters of a ton, and the same nailed and screwed in place over the entire surface and along the seams. There was no intermediate filling, and his skin now fits his wooden body in every part as closely as does the bark on a tree.” In mounting the skeleton, Professor Ward made some interesting observations, and was able to compare Jumbo’s frame with that of a full-grown mastodon which was being mounted at the same time. That Jumbo was quite a young animal, was determined from an examination of his teeth and bones ; and, gigantic as he was, he might have attained much larger dimensions. To take Jumbo’s place, Mr. Barnum has purchased Alice, the large African elephant of the London Zodélogical Garden, who, according to Tegetmier, “‘is not of an amiable temper.” 76 THE IVORY KING. Alice is an African elephant, perfect with the exception of — the tip end of her trunk, which was torn off some years ago. She is about the age of the late Jumbo, and will also find a resting-place, when her term has run, in some of the American institutions of science. HOW ELEPHANTS ARE CAPTURED ALIVE. TT CHAPTER VII. HOW ASIATIC ELEPHANTS ARE CAPTURED ALIVE. HOUGH the tusks of the Asiatic elephant are not large and valuable enough to make its capture for that pur- pose profitable, the live animal itself is greatly esteemed as a beast of burden, and as a show-animal in the pageants of the native princes, every petty court or rich man considering it necessary to his dignity to possess a number of the huge ani- mals. To supply this demand, professional hunters are in the field during every season, using several different methods to entrap the great game. If the plan is to capture a large number of elephants at a time, kheddahs, or enclosures, are built; this method being the one now in use by the Govern- ment Hunting-Establishment in Bengal. To make it success- ful, about four hundred natives are required; and their duties are so different and varied, that a page from the pay-roll, and list of duties from the books of Mr. G. P. Sanderson, officer in charge of the Government Elephant-Catching Establish- ment in Mysore, are appended: — No. Detail. Rate of pay per mensem. Remarks. Rs. a 9% ' To collect establishment, and conduct Dimemeemar i. operations. 1 Interpreter . . . 10 °#To Hill-men. Dee riber . are ee) 78 THE IVORY KING. No Detail. Rate of pay per mensem, Remarks. Rs. : < -eplieienanll ie To go ahead and learn the position of 2 Mate trackers 74 r herd. and sénd word 4 nine > a nat ae erd, and send word to hunters. 20 Head coolies . 9 ) To surround and guard herd, con- 20 Mate coolies . 74 + struct enclosure, and drive elephants 280 Coolies . (fl ome i To keep a check on circle of coolies, 1 Havildar 9 | by going around at short intervals ; 1 Naik 74 \ also to mount guard at the depart- 14 Sepoys . 7 | ment’s camp. These men are fur- J nished with guns, 1 Head nooser . 9 ) To bind the wild, elephants when im- 4 Noosers 7 i pounded in the enclosure. | These men are furnished with guns, 1 Head pulwan. 9 and take post at any point where 4 Pulwaéns 7 the elephants show a determination to face the cordon of coolies. These men constitute a well-organized army of elephant- hunters under the immediate command of a jemadar, or native sergeant, who in turn is responsible to a British or European officer. Besides the remuneration in the above pay-roll, each man receives free rations equal to two pounds of rice a day, two pounds of salt fish, chillies, salt, etc., per month. The total expense of a party is about twelve hundred dollars. Besides these numerous hunters, every party has a number of tame elephants, or koonkies, upon which the success of the hunt often depends. It is estimated that one tame elephant can manage two wild ones. ‘This consists in leading the cap- tives to water, bringing them fodder, etc. The Asiatic hunt- ing-parties generally organize in December, and enter the field for two or three months. When the advance-guard dis- covers a herd, the large party comes to a stand-still some HOW ELEPHANTS ARE CAPTURED ALIVE. 179 distance away, and then begins an organized system of pro- gression. ‘The men divide, and spread out in a circle, the object being to surround the herd; and, when complete, the natives often cover six or eight miles of ground, the men being some distance apart. When the word has been passed that the herd is in the centre, a bamboo fence is quickly put up, the material being at hand: in two or three hours, per- haps, the animals are entirely surrounded, and the men on the alert to see that they do not break out. During the day the elephants are generally not visible; and at night bonfires are built around the great circle, and the men by yells and shouts keep the terrified animals in the centre. Here they are watched, perhaps for a week, the men remaining at the posts, where they erect rude huts, and make themselves com- fortable. As soon as the bamboo enclosure is completed, the important work, or the kheddah, is commenced, —a fence within the large one. ‘To construct this, half the guard are detailed; and in a remarkably short time a stout fence is built in a circular form, about twelve feet in height, and from sixty to one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, braced and supported in the strongest manner; while all around the inside of the fence a ditch four feet wide is made. An opening about twelve feet wide is left on one side, facing one of the ele- phant runs, or tracts. To guide the elephants to the gate, palisades are built, diverging from it to a distance of one hun- dred and fifty feet. This arranged, the men close in on the herd, and, by shouting and firing, force them along the drive that leads to the funnel-shaped opening. Into this they run in a terrified throng; and, when all are in, the gate, which is a heavy affair studded with nails, is lowered by men stationed overhead, and a shout of triumph rises from the crowd of 80 | THE IVORY KING. coolies. The elephants are now completely at their mercy. The fence is strong enough to prevent an outbreak; and, even if it were not, the ditch prevents their approaching it near enough to test their strength. Sometimes an elephant more plucky than the rest will make the attempt, and go through it like paper: but the elephant lacks intelligence in some things; and, when a break has been made by one, the others rarely follow the leader, a few shouting coolies being suff- cient to keep them back. The elephants do not always enter the kheddah so will- ingly, but break away, running over the men, and often kill- | ing numbers of them; but, as a rule, a well drilled and organized party manages the drive without great difficulty. When the herd is under control, the tame elephants are marched in, each with its mahout, or driver, upon its neck; and it is a curious fact, again showing the elephant’s lack of intelligence, that the men are never touched, though they could be hauled from the tame animals with the greatest ease. Acting under the directions of the mahouts, the tame ele- phants separate the wild ones one by one from the herd; and, when they are surrounded, the men, or tiers, slip to the ground, and pass ropes or chains about their hind-legs, by which they are picketed until they have been reduced to subjection. For many years elephants have been caught in Bengal, and the above plan for taking entire herds at a time is now in use by Mr. Sanderson.! His most successful operations were carried on near the village of Chémraj-Nuggar near the 1 Mr. Sanderson’s long residence in India, and his great experience, natu- rally entitle him to be regarded as authority on the elephant, notwithstanding some authors do not agree with him on certain points. ‘OL-99 Sadvq “THA AIWTd "ZQSL jnog V SUIPAV) 7209180]007 UOPUoT JV [V2IAAD Sty AdLfv ysnl Ua ‘oqwalf Aadva AS a Ni N SS See yv7 Y fv A.S0J0Yg VD MOAT eo ee ae ee ——SaaqFaeaeSSS— SSS ———— a ae oe ee ro HOW ELEPHANTS ARE CAPTURED ALIVE. 81 foot of the Billiga-rungun hills. His first plan was met by much ridicule from the natives; and all the true Mussulmans _ were firm in the belief that no good would come of it, for the very good reason that there was a curse handed down by a former unsuccessful elephant-trapper for the benefit of any one who made the attempt to capture an entire herd after him. The natives were willing, however, to enter the em- ploy of the official for a consideration, probably when they were convinced that the curse would fall upon him alone. Be this as it may, he had no difficulty in organizing a good band of elephant-hunters; and in a short time a plan of ope- rations was formed on the Houhollay River. The first attempt was unsuccessful, but the next season an entire herd was captured; and since then, many large herds have been secured, the business being a valuable one to the government. The following is a description of one of these government hunts from the pen of Mr. Sanderson, the officer in charge: — “Tt was past mid-day before we got all the elephants into cover, and not a minute’s rest did any of us get until eleven P.M. Capt. C camp at Surgoor, and Major G intend the people. At one point, the supply of tools was in- sufficient; and Capt. C ging a body of men who were digging with sharpened sticks, , of the revenue survey, came over from his , and he helped to super- was superintending and encoura- and even their bare fingers. The elephants were very noisy in the cover, but did not show themselves. At every twenty yards three or four men were stationed to keep up large fires. These were reflected in the water of the channel and river, which increased their effect. We all had a most exaggerated idea of what the elephants might attempt; and the strength of our defences was in proportion, and greater than they 82 THE IVORY KING. need have been. I was kept on the move almost all night by false alarms at different points, fortunately groundless ones. One tusker showed himself on the bank of the channel, but met with such a reception from firebrands and stones, that he retreated in haste. ‘The river was an advantage, as the elephants had easy access to water. The lurid glare of the fires, the giant figures of the lightly clad watchers, their wild gesticulations on the bank with waving torches, the back- ground of dense jungle resonant with trumpeting of the giants of the forest, formed a scene which words are feeble to depict, and that cannot fade from the memories of those who witnessed it. By eleven p.m. the defences were thoroughly secured; and that the elephants could not now escape, was certain, unless, indeed, they carried some of our barricades, which were, however, so strong as to be almost beyond their power. The men differed as to their number. I had seen about twenty: some declared there were fifty, but I could not believe this at the time. The number was fifty-four, as we subsequently found. The excitement of the scene was irresistible ; so I betook myself to walking around the enclos- ure at intervals throughout the night, followed by a man carrying a basket of cheroots, which I distributed to the people. ‘he rest of the time I lay upon my cot, which my servant had been thoughtful enough to bring from Morlay, enjoying the wildness of the sounds and scenes around, and soothed by cheroots and coffee. When the elephants ap- proached the place where I was, the guards thrust long bam- boos into the fires, which sent showers of sparks up to the tops of the trees overhead, where they exploded with a sound like pistol-shots. The first crow of the jungle-cock was the most grateful sound I think I ever heard, as it showed our HOW ELEPHANTS ARE CAPTURED ALIVE. 838 anxious vigil was drawing to a close. We knew that during the day the elephants would give us no trouble. My herds- men now joined me from the points where they had been sta- tioned during the night, and we set about considering the next step to be taken; namely, making a small enclosure, or pound, into which to get the elephants confined. Of course, this would take some time to carry out. If driven from the east, we knew that the animals would pass between the tem- ple and channel at the west end of the cover, with a view to crossing the river below the temple, and regaining their native hills, which, however, they were fated never to see again. I therefore laid out a pound of one hundred yards in diameter, surrounded by a ditch nine feet wide at top, three at bottom, and nine feet deep. This was connected with the larger cover by two guiding trenches which converged to the gate. It was completed in four days by the personal exertions of the amildar with a body of laborers who worked with a will, as their crops had suffered from the incursions of elephants, and they appreciated the idea of reducing their numbers. | “The last thing completed was the entrance gate, which consisted of three transverse trunks of trees slung by chains between two trees that formed gate-posts. ‘This barrier was hauled up and suspended by a single rope, so as to be cut away after the elephants passed. The news of the intended drive attracted several visitors from Mysore. Tents were pitched in an open glade close to the river, and we soon had a pleasant party of ladies and gentlemen. The evening before the drive, all assembled within view of the point where the elephants were in the habit of drinking at sunset, and were gratified with an admirable view of the huge creatures, 84 THE IVORY KING, disporting themselves timidly in the water. On the morning of the 17th, every thing being in readiness for the drive, Capts. P., B., and I proceeded with some picked hands to drive the herd from its stronghold towards the pound. We succeeded in moving them through the thick parts of the cover with rockets, and soon got them near to its entrance. A screened platform had been erected for the ladies at a point near the gate, where they could see the final drive into the enclosure from a place of safety. The elephants, how- ever, when near the entrance, made a stand, and refused to proceed, and finally, headed by a determined female, turned upon the beaters, and threatened to break down an open glade. P.and I intercepted them, and most of them hes- itated ; but the leading female, the mother of an albino calf, which had been evilly disposed from the beginning, rushed down upon me, as I happened to be directly in her path, with shrill screams, followed by four or five others, which, how- ever, advanced less boldly. When within five yards, I floored her with my eight-bore Greener and ten drams; but, though the heavy ball hit the right spot between the eyes, the shot was not fatal; as the head was carried in a peculiar position, and the bullet passed under the brain. The elephant fell at the shot, almost upon me, and P. fired; and I gave her my second barrel, which in the smoke missed her head, but took effect in her chest, and must have penetrated to the region of the heart, as a heavy jet of blood spouted forth when she rose. For a moment she swayed about, then fell to rise no more. This was a painful sight. The elephant had only acted in defence of her young; but shooting her was unavoid- able, as our lives, as well as those of the beaters, were in jeopardy. HOW ELEPHANTS ARE CAPTURED ALIVE. 85 “The next scene partook of the ridiculous. The herd dis- persed, and regained its position. The little albino calf, see- ing P., screamed wildly, and with ears extended, and tail aloft, chased him. He, wishing to save it, darted around the trees, but was near coming to grief, as he tripped and fell. The result might have been disastrous had I not given the pertinacious youngster a telling butt in the head with my eight-bore. His attention was next turned to a native, who took to his heels when he found that three sharp blows with a club on the head had little effect. After some severe struggles, in which a few natives were floored, the calf was at last secured to a tree by a native’s waist-cloth and a jungle- creeper. | “ While all this took place, the beat became thoroughly dis- organized. When the elephant had charged P. and me, our _ men had given way; and the herd regained its original posi- | tion, at the extreme east end of the cover. After a short delay, we beat it up again to the spot near the gate from _ which it had broken back. The elephants had formed a dense mob, and began moving round and round in a circle, hesitating to cross the newly filled-in trench, which had reached from the channel to the river, but which was now refilled to allow them to pass on into the kheddah. At length they were forced to proceed by the shots fired, and by the firebrands carried through the paths in the thicket. The bright eyes of the fair watchers near the gate were at length gratified by seeing one great elephant after another pass the Rubicon. After a short pause, owing to a stand being made by some of the most refractory, the last of the herd passed in with a rush, closely followed into the inner enclosure by a frantic beater, waving a firebrand. P. and 86 THE IVORY KING. I came up third, in time to save any accident from the fall of the barrier. C., who was perched on a light branch of the gate-post, cut the rope ; and, amidst the cheers of all, the valuable prize of fifty-three elephants was secured to the Mysore Government. I often think of the rapture of that moment. How warmly we sahibs shook hands! How my trackers hugged my legs, and prostrated themselves before P. and B.! An hour of such varied excitement as elephant- catching is surely worth a lifetime of uneventful routine in town.” Such is the account of an enthusiastic hunter, one of the best living authorities on these elephants ; and few men have enjoyed his privileges. To complete the capture of this herd, seventeen tame elephants were employed; and finally they were all tamed and ready for use. ‘They consisted of sixteen male elephants, the largest being eight feet five inches at the shoulder; three mucknas, or tuskless males; thirty females, and nine young ones. Nine were given to the Mah4arajah’s stud, ten to the Madras Commissariat Department, while twenty-five were sold at public auction when they were tame enough to be used by purchasers. The latter realized about $415 apiece, or in a bulk $10,425; and the amount realized from the entire catch, deducting the deaths, was $18,770. Deducting from this the total sum of expenditures from Mr. Sanderson’s first attempt at their capture in 1873, or $7,780, a profit to the government remained of $10,995. Mr. Sanderson was congratulated by the chief commissioner of Mysore, and his excellency the viceroy and governor-general in council, and has since continued to capture elephants on this plan, always with marked success. His last catch that I have record of, that of 1882, was two hundred and fifty-one, HOW ELEPHANTS ARE CAPTURED ALIVE. 87 and that only up to March. ‘The first drive yielded sixty- five, and the second fifty-five, elephants. These animals were taken in the Garrow Hills. _ A second method of taking wild elephants in India is by following them with females trained for the purpose. This plan is usually more successful in the capture of large tuskers than the kheddah, as the latter are often away from the herd, and do not become entrapped. The hunt is generally com- posed of four or five well-trained female elephants ridden by mahouts, who sit upon their necks, and are hidden by cloths or blankets of the same color as the elephant’s skin. In some works, these elephants are called decoys; but this is an entirely mistaken idea. ‘The tame elephants use no arts to attract the wild ones, in the sense of a decoy, merely obeying the commands or signs of the keeper. When the location of a single male is determined, the tame elephants approach the spot in a leisurely manner, feed- ing as they move. Sometimes the wild elephant scents the mahouts, and moves off; but, as often, they do not seem to notice them; and, if not, the tame ones gradually surround him, and endeavor by command of their mahouts, who direct them by signs, to keep its attention. Generally there is an elephant in the near vicinity, loaded with ropes and other material; and, as several days are occupied, the men are relieved every day, the elephants drawing off one by one, and returning with fresh men. This surveillance is kept up day and night; and, during the latter, the wild elephant goes into the fields to feed, being closely followed by the seemingly treacherous females with their concealed drivers. When he returns to the forest as the day approaches, they follow: and as he lies down, and 88 THE IVORY KING. tries to go to sleep, they close in about him, and, at the com- mand of the mahouts, keep him awake by various devices ; all this performance resulting in thoroughly fatiguing the old fellow, and making him sleep very soundly when he does take a nap. Sometimes an elephant is fed with sugar-cane loaded with opium, to make him sleep; and, as soon as he has fallen into a deep slumber, the mahouts slip off behind, and securely tie his legs. ‘Then the mien in the rear come up, and rudely awaken him, slapping him on his haunches, and telling him facetiously to be of ‘ good cheer.” The struggles of the trapped elephant are terrific, and they often injure themselves fatally. The tame elephants follow them up until they are thoroughly subdued, when they are securely bound, and led to the place where their training commences; and a few months later, they are carry- ing their human owners about, or working in the timber district, as if they had not been wild elephants so short a time before. | A third method of taking elephants-here is by the pitfall, —a barbarous custom, not now in general practice, as it always resulted in the loss by death of a large proportion of the catch. The plan was to dig pitfalls in the well-known and beaten tracts of elephants in the jungle, or under certain trees where they were known to congregate to feed. These traps, or holes, were generally ten and a half feet long by seven and a half broad, and fifteen feet deep, being purposely small, so that the imprisoned animals could not dig down the earth with their tusks, which they often did. In former years, there was, according to the government official, a per- fect network of these pits in Mysore, and kept in order by the Mahar4jah, the Forest Department, and others. The natives, PLATE IX. ELEPHANT. ASIATIC = =F . = ‘ ~ x . > Af ms . - a * io , * , r J y o ’ “ . . 4 ~~ 7 , . x J ¢ * o s r P 4 F4 ” - ¢ , i <3 we na “, ‘eae , * f ~ ” - ® 5 a -" vel f . f . ° d - e rs r > #, ¢ 4 * y ‘ nd r Fs / y * _ 4 7 Wed nihey of > 4 a, ; , ay , . é ; 5 - a f “ f i Pe eS . 3 : ! { : ‘ : ‘ ' P : ' i, - re, ¥ > o = f at ay ela me . ” oe 7 va | a *, “, Ce pd bd " i a s ee Aes * 7 ar aoe . ‘o ae Ba Ga. & , al , a = ee + ¢ dm ‘ yy 219 “ oi aa oe yf - oh wy + P - - , x nail - , J a “ a . w = * ‘ < “d ’ * , 4°? ‘ , Fi sys 14 very oes. , 1S “ ' a | ¥ ies | . :* i . - ' ih " \ : | { : : : et : \ » , ee - ’ ~ , ‘ . : | H ; * ai or ele AS HOW ELEPHANTS ARE CAPTURED ALIVE. 89 as the Strolagas and Kurrabas, also made pits; and when an elephant was trapped, and they had no way of getting it out, the poor creatures often died before a tame elephant could be secured to give the required assistance. Through the. en- deavors of Sanderson, this inhuman practice has been given up; and all elephants caught are treated as humanely as possible. | A fourth plan of capture is by noosing wild elephants from the back of a tame one; and this affords a most excel- lent and manly sport, to be commended, as the animal is given fair play, and boldly met in the field. It is confined to Bengal and Napaul, not being practised in Southern India, and is not in favor for the reason that not rarely the tame elephants are badly injured, and the wear and tear upon them is too great. The sport is extremely dangerous, and is car- ried on something after the fashion of lariating wild cattle in the West of our own country. Fast elephants are selected, and three drivers provided each. One sits on the neck, to direct it; another sits near the tail, and, with a spike and a mallet, is supposed to hammer the unfortunate animal as - hard as possible, just over the spot marked by the os coccygis. This is to spur the elephant on to excessive bursts of speed, and generally success. A third man sits on a pad upon the elephant’s back, and holds a noose, the other end of the rope being strapped about the animal’s body. Thus fitted, a wild herd is followed; and, once sighted, the last man hammers at the creature with his spike and mallet, and away they go, over the rocks and through the bush in a wild chase. If the tame elephants are fleet enough, they soon range alongside, and give the rope-handler an opportu- nity to test his skill, which he does by throwing the noose 90 THE IVORY KING. over the head of the nearest elephant. Some natives are very expert at this; but men are often hauled off and crushed, or the elephants are choked, and many accidents occur. A different kind of noosing is practised in Ceylon, where men follow the animals on foot, and throw a noose so skil- fully, that they catch them about their legs when running at full speed through the jungle. As soon as this is accom- plished, the men follow along, and twist the end about a tree, and soon have the great game at their mercy. In all these cases, there is great danger, but not so much as where the animal is followed by the hunter on foot, and meets the huge creature face to face, his object being the tusks; described in a separate chapter on elephant-hunting as a sport. ASIATIC ELEPHANTS IN CAPTIVITY. 91 CHAPTER VIII. ASIATIC ELEPHANTS IN CAPTIVITY. N the previous chapter we have seen how elephants were captured in the early times in India, and how modern methods have humanized the entire system of their seizure ; and now we will glance at the huge captives in confinement. The Asiatic elephant is a marketable commodity, and is bought and sold lke the horse in this country. After the government has selected those needed for its use, the rest are sold. Certain places have become famous for their sales. Stonepoor, on the Ganges, is, perhaps, the best known; and here, every year, a great fair is held, and many elephants sold and exchanged. ‘This location is particularly favorable for _ the purpose, as hundreds of thousands of pilgrims meet here to worship at the famous shrine of Shiva. The scene at this time is one of great activity: and im- mense numbers of elephants are exhibited, and many sharp bargains made; as the East Indian elephant-traders are not a whit behind the horse-dealers of Western countries. Another celebrated elephant headquarters in Bengal, where these animals are sometimes sold, is at Dacca, a populous native city of seventy thousand inhabitants. It is about one hundred miles from the sea, and was once noted as a ship- building port, and headquarters for a ‘fleet of eight hundred 92 THE IVORY KING. armed vessels, whose duty it was to protect the southern coast from the cruel Arracanese pirates. From its location on a branch of the Ganges, it is admirably adapted as the headquarters of the Bengal Elephant-catching Establishment, water, grasses, and fodder of various kinds, being plentiful ; while its availability to the forests of Sylhet Cachar and Chittagong, which abound in wild elephants, render it a com- paratively easy matter for the captives to be brought to a first-class market. The elephant depot is called a peelkhdna, and stands in the suburbs of the town. It embraces an area about a quar- ter of a mile square, consisting of an intrenched quad- rangular piece of ground, where the pickets, to which the elephants are tethered, are arranged in regular rows. Each picket is provided with a solid floor of stone or mortar, where there is a post to which the elephants are fastened. During the heat of the day, they are removed to sheds. In the enclosures are numbers of buildings, containing the gear, and various apphances used about elephants. There is a hospital, where the invalid elephants are tended; for, if ele- phants do not die very often, they sometimes get sick, and are then given the best of treatment. There is also a hos- pital, or room, for the native doctor, who doses the elephants’ attendants when they require it, as only a native doctor can do; and, as the elephants have a European to look after them when ill, they probably have the best of it. This great depot is under an English officer, who generally organizes the great hunts that have been described. The establishment is com- posed at all times of about fifty trained elephants, called koonkies. Besides these, there are always a number under- going the training process; and, when ready for service, they a ASITATIC ELEPHANTS IN CAPTIVITY. 93 are divided up among the various military stations, or sold, as the case may be. Stonepoor is the scene of great public sales. Here those who wish to make a selection from many elephants, congregate; and their ideas of good points are strangely at variance with our own. ‘The natives recognize three different castes, or breeds, based upon certain physical peculiarities ; and, when about to purchase, they state which class they wish to invest in. In Bengal, these breeds are known as Koomeriah, Dwdsala, and Meerga; meaning, first, second, and third class animals. The word Koomeriah im- plies royalty, and is supposed to possess every excellence, and is among elephants what Maud 5. or St. Julian are among trotting-horses. Its points, according to Sanderson, are: bar- rel deep, and of great girth; legs short (especially the hind ones) and colossal, the front pair convex on the front side from the development of the muscles; back straight and flat, but sloping from shoulder.to tail, as an up-standing elephant must be high in front; head and chest massive, neck thick and short; trunk broad at the base, and proportionately heavy throughout; bump between the eyes prominent; cheeks full; the eye full, bright, and kindly; hindquarters square and plump, the skin rumpled, thick, inclining to folds at the root of the tail, and soft. If the face, base of trunk, and ears be blotched with cream-colored markings,! the animal’s value is enhanced thereby. ‘The tail must be long, but not touch the ground, and be well feathered. A Koomeriah should be about nine feet and over high. The temper of these animals of both sexes is, as a rule, superior to that of others; and, according to the above authority, while gentleness and submissiveness are character- 1 In Burmah this would be considered a white elephant. O4 THE IVORY KING. istics of all elephants, the Avoomeriah possesses these qualities, and unanimity, urbanity, and courage, in a high degree. In short, the Moomeriah is the standard of perfection among elephants. The Dwesala caste includes all those which rank just below this in point of excellence; while the Meerga, which is sup- posed to be a corruption of the Sanscrit Mriga, a deer, refers to all the rest; almost the reverse of the first caste in every particular, being long and thin of limb, with an arched, sharp-ridged back, a thin, flabby trunk, and long and lean neck ; the head small, and eyes piggish. In fact, its whole appearance is often indicative of its nature; that is, mean and cowardly at times. The Meerga, however, is not without a value, being the swifter of the race; and, if speed alone is required, it is more valued than the Aoomeriah. They can always be obtained, while Aoomeriahs are not always in the market. The Kabul merchants make a specialty of them, as our Kentucky dealers do of blooded horse-stock. Many are attached to the various courts, and devote their entire time in hunting for first-class animals for their masters. It sometimes happens that an elephant dies after almost reaching the city, and the merchant is nearly ruined; but in such eases an Eastern nobleman would consider it beneath his dignity to refuse to pay for the defunct animal ;— an example of true Oriental munificence. The price of elephants has increased in India of late years, though their numbers are not growing less. In 1835 they could be bought for $225 apiece; in 1855 for $375; in 1874, *660. Now $750 is the lowest figure for which even a young animal can be purchased. Though the prices are very capricious, good females of full growth bring from $1,000 to ASIATIC ELEPHANTS IN CAPTIVITY. 95 $1,500; and #10,000 is often paid for a fine Koomeriah. These are all bought up by rdjahs and others, who use them in their retinues, and for temple purposes. Elephants were often in the olden times grossly treated and starved; but in the present day they are too valuable to be neglected, and are, as a rule, carefully tended when under the observation of Europeans; but, if left to the mercies of the natives to-day, they will often deprive them of food if any thing can be gained by it. The captive elephants require much care, from the enor- mous amount of food they eat. In Bengal and Madras, the government decides how much each elephant shall have for breakfast, dinner, and supper; and the allowance is a liberal one. In Bengal the rations per day are four hundred pounds of green fodder, which means grass, sugar-cane, or branches of trees; or two hundred and forty pounds of dry fodder, namely, stalks of cut grain. In Madras, only two hundred and fifty pounds of green fodder, and’ one hundred and twenty-five of dry, are allowed; —not by any means the amount a full-grown, hearty elephant will eat. A large tusker requires eight hundred pounds of green fodder every eighteen hours, or day. In eight females which were watched by Mr. Sanderson, commencing at six P.M., they ate an average weight of six hundred and fifty pounds by twelve A.M. the next day. They also had eighteen pounds of grain a day. The elephants are required to bring in their own green fodder; and one can conveniently carry a load of eight hundred pounds, or one day’s food. The discrepancy between this showing and that which the Madras elephants received, was made a subject of investiga- 96 THE IVORY KING. tion by the government at the suggestion of Mr. Sanderson, and resulted in the poor creatures receiving their proper allowance. It was found by the investigating officers, that the animals which had been having two hundred and fifty pounds of green fodder, could eat seven hundred and fifty pounds of dry sugar-cane: so for years they had been worked hard and half starved, merely because the govern- ment had fixed the rate per diem. ‘This is another instance of the reforms that have been instituted by Mr. Sanderson, who has the thanks of all admirers of this noble animal. If an elephant in confinement possesses such a seemingly enormous appetite, a herd must be an expensive luxury to keep. In Bengal the expense for one elephant per mensen is as follows : — RS. ASs.! 1 mahout (driver) A ' : : . ie, 1 grass-cutter . , : : : . a. 18 lbs. unhusked rice per day, at 64 lbs. per rupee ote Allowance for medicines, salt, ete. : : fA ; 13 Fodder allowance at 2 annas per diem : Es 24 40 In Madras it is forty-eight rupees. 1 A rupee equals fifty cents. HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT. YT ES te —_ CHAPTER IX. HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT, HE lion and tiger share the time-honored term of king of beasts; their courage, intrepid natures, majestic bearing, and record for ferocity, having earned them the title, in the estimation of many. But, when compared to the elephant, these noble animals are mere pretenders. ‘The elephant is the true king, the monarch of the land in size and strength, and capable, when thoroughly enraged, of toy- ing with the tiger or lion. Rarely does an elephant fall a victim to either of these animals, and then only in their extreme youth. An instance is recorded by Sanderson which was considered so remarkable that he made a long trip to the place to verify it. The elephant was a mere baby,—a calf four and a half feet at the shoulder, and weighing, perhaps, six hundred pounds. It had wandered off into the jungle, where it was pounced upon by the man-eater; falling an easy victim, as its legs were tied to each other. The tiger had sprung upon it, seizing it by the throat as it would a bullock, and dragged it twenty or thirty feet, there feasting upon its quarters. Another instance is recorded of a hobbled, or tied, ele- phant being attacked by a man-eater; but the animal’s cries attracted the attention of the keeper, and it was saved. 98 THE IVORY WING. An animal so powerful as the elephant would naturally afford the grandest sport to the hunter; and, in following the great game, more dangers are incurred, and risks run, than in any known chase. We have seen, that, in trapping elephants, every attempt is made to preserve them from injury: but, in hunting them for‘mere sport, this is reversed; and the animal is fol- lowed, either on foot or horseback, and shot as quickly as possible. This is often a most dangerous operation, and accompanied by the death of hunter and attendants. In trapping elephants, the men have the fences to retreat to, and tame elephants to hide behind; but the true sportsman follows the game into its own haunts, the deepest jungle, and boldly faces it, giving the noble creature an even chance for its life. Sir Samuel Baker and Sanderson both say that elephant- shooting is the most dangerous of all sports if fairly followed for a length of time. Many elephants may be killed with- out the sportsman being in any peril; but, if an infuriated beast does make an attack, its charge is one of supreme dan- ger. The risk has this charm, that, though so great unless steadily and skilfully met, it is within the sportsman’s power, by coolness and good shooting, to end it and the assailant’s career by one well-planted ball. : The wild elephant’s attack is one of the noblest sights of the chase, and a grander animated object than a wild elephant in full charge can hardly be imagined. The cocked ears and broad forehead present an immense frontage. The head is held high, with the trunk coiled between the tusks, to be un- coiled in the moment of attack. The massive fore-legs come down with the force and regularity of ponderous machinery ; HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT. o9 and the whole figure is rapidly foreshortened, and appears to double in size with each advancing stride. The trunk being doubled, and unable to emit any sound, the attack is made in silence, and after the usual premonitory shriek, which adds to its impressiveness. (See Plate XXIII.) | In former times the natives hunted the elephant with what are called genjalls, —nothing more nor less than small cannon weighing about forty-five pounds, and mounted on a tripod- stand or carriage. The bullet used was of lead, weight about half a pound, and propelled by half a pound of native powder. Each hunting-party was fitted out with one of these, which was borne on a pole by four men,—two men carrying the gun itself, one the stand, while the fourth was the captain, who did the aiming and firing. When the game was discovered by these pot-hunters, the gun was placed about three feet from the ground, aimed at any portion of the body, and fired. A fuze was generally used; and, igniting this, the valiant sportsmen ran away as fast as possible, — indeed, for their lives, as the cannon usu- ally kicked completely over: and often limbs were broken, and other accidents occurred, the result of tardiness in retreating. These guns were usually fatal at ninety or one hundred feet ; and the unfortunate brutes rarely escaped if hit, often being desperately wounded. As many as five or six have been taken in this way, during the time that the Madras Government offered thirty dollars a head for them, to reduce their numbers; and elephant-hunting became a lucrative business, adopted by every one who could buy a jinjall. The weapons now used in elephant-hunting are rifles; and the heaviest bore that can be carried with convenience is 100 THE IVORY KING. generally none too large, though Sir Samuel Baker usually used a light gun; this being, however, because he could not shoot with a heavy one. : The larger the gun, the less opportunity there is of game escaping, to die a lingering death; and this generally decides the true sportsman. During the last decade, twelve-bore rifles were greatly used (1% oz. ball), but these are rarely seen now. Sanderson, one of the best living authorities on the subject of hunting the Asiatic elephant, killed several of his first elephants with a No. 12 spherical-ball rifle with hard bullets and six drachms of powder. But this he discarded for a No. 4 double smooth bore, C. F., weighing nineteen and a half pounds, built by W. W. Greener. With this he fires twelve drachms of powder. Another gun, a No. 8 double rifle, firing twelve drachms, and weighing seventeen pounds, same make, he recommends, having stopped several char- ging elephants with it. No game in America requires such heavy arms, but the huge elephant demands weapons in pro- portion to its size. | In the majority of animals, a shot in any vital part is sufficient to disable them to some extent: but, in Asiatic- elephant shooting, there are only three shots that can be depended upon; and the sportsman must be somewhat well acquainted with the anatomy of the animal to successfully make them. ‘The three vulnerable spots are the front, the bullet striking the forehead; the side, or temple; and the rear, or behind the ear. The brain of the animal is the mark; and it is so small in proportion to the rest of the skull, that a slight change of position, either raising or depressing the head, will render the shot futile. This can be seen by ex- amining a section of an elephant’s skull. (See Plate I.) © ‘rlLir aso X 3LV1d *“SGNYOMS HLIM LINVHdW 1a HHL ONILNOH ie TT WH Hi +p t= pa 3 HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT. 101 The elephant sportsman usually makes elaborate prep- arations for the sport, taking a sufficient number of natives, servants, and trackers, with provisions to stay in the field some time; and only after some practice can he approach a herd, and pick out his shot, with any feeling of confidence. The true hunter disregards the females, seeking the old tuskers; and to approach a herd without giving the alarm requires great caution, and nota little experience. The great game is generally found moving gradually in a given direc- tion, feeding as they go. If they are approached from the wind, they scent danger from afar: but the experienced hunter creeps up against the wind, and ordinary caution enables him to approach within thirty or forty feet, —quite near enough, my readers would think, when one knows, that, upon the first shot, the entire herd will charge madly in any and every direction. The old tuskers, the heads of the family, rarely cover the retreat of a herd when an attack is made, usually starting off on their own account, leaving the others to look out for themselves. When the presence of the hunter is realized, the one who makes the discovery informs the rest by a “peculiar short, shrill trumpet,” understood by old hunters as well. The herd immediately cease feeding, all standing perfectly still, probably using their ears and scent, or perhaps making up their minds which way to go. The next movement differs in different cases. Sometimes the herd charge wildly in any direction ; sometimes in a body; or, again, they move with such remarkable celerity and silence, that even old hunters have been deceived. This peculiarity of the elephant, the largest of living land 102 THE IVORY KING. animals, is extremely remarkable. How such a huge body can make its way through bamboo and jungle so gently, is hard to imagine ; but often, after the first rapid rush, there is absolute silence; and the novice comes to a stand-still, think- ing that the game has followed suit. On the contrary, the headlong charge of the herd has been changed to a rapid walk, so silent, that persons in very close proximity to a band making off in this way, have failed to hear even the boughs and bushes scraping against the thick hide. A charging herd will soon overtake a man, especially if he runs up-hill; and the appearance of a mass of bobbing heads and elevated ears moving forward through the jungle, is quite sufficient to unnerve the majority of men. When a charge is made, the natives rush for trees or clumps of bam- boos, or often escape by standing still, so small an object being passed by in the fury of the rush. Exactly what a herd will do when attacked, it is imposaltie to say. if they have never heard a shot before, they often huddle together in the greatest alarm, and do not break and charge until the continued firing and appearance of smoke thoroughly alarms them. They perhaps think the noise is thunder until the continued repetition disabuses them of the idea. Klephants, when standing in this undecided manner, are liable to outbursts of fury if not treated in a certain way. Sanderson says, “ At such times no one should shout to turn them, as a charge by one or more is sure to be made if startled in this peculiar way. I have seen and experienced several instances of the danger of this. In Chittagong, whilst driving elephants into a stockade on one oceasion, they ap- proached the guiding line of beaters too closely, when a man HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT. 103 who was behind a small bush shouted at them within thirty yards. A female at once charged him. ‘The man fell; and with the pressure of her foot she split him open, and killed him on the spot. This elephant had a very young calf, from solicitude of which she became a perfect fury.” Contrary to general belief, the single, or solitary, tuskers afford the greatest sport. They are generally found away from the herd before nine o’clock in the morning, and at this time the hunter endeavors to find them. When a great dis- tance from a herd, the solitary elephant ceases feeding at about ten, then stands listlessly a while under cover, and finally lies down and goes to sleep. As a rule, it snores quite loudly; the sound, which has a metallic ring to it, coming from the trunk. Besides this, they often, perhaps involuntarily, raise their upper ear, and let it fall with a resounding slap upon the neck. All these sounds are well known to the trackers; and, by them, they can tell just what to expect, and how far away the game which is concealed in the jungle is. If a bed recently used is found by the trackers, they immediately look for tusk-holes, or the impressions of the tusks in the soil, made when the animal is lying down. If they can put five fingers in the hole, they consider that the tusks will weigh thirty pounds apiece, and are well worth following. Sanderson thus describes a hunt organized for his benefit in the Billiga-rungun hills, not far from Mysore: “I kept my eye on the tusker, who was in the middle of the line, and was wondering how I could get a shot at his brain, when, as luck would have it, some vegetable attraction overhead tempted him, and he raised his head to reach it with his trunk. I had 104 ) THE IVORY KING. beforehand fixed the fatal spot in my mind’s eye; and, catch- ing sight of his temple, I fired. For a moment I could see nothing, for the smoke, but heard a tremendous commotion amongst the elephants that were in company with the tusker. Stepping a little aside, I saw their huge heads all turning towards me, their ears outspread, and their trunks coiled up in terrified astonishment. Being a novice in the sport, I felt for the moment that I was in real danger. I stood my ground however, determined, that, if any of them charged, to fire at the foremost, and to run to Jaffer for the second rifle: that failing, the case would have been rather bad. However, charging was far from their thoughts: right about! quick march! was more to their fancy ; and with shrieks and trumpets, away they went, some to the right, some to the left, joined by the whole herd in one headlong race, up or down the nullah. But my tusker remained stone dead upon his knees. The triumph of such a success, utterly unassisted, and in my first inexperienced attempt, quite transported me. My bullet had reached the tusker’s brain: and, in sinking down, he must have been supported by the bodies and legs of the elephants between which he was wedged in; thus he still remained on his knees, though quite dead. He retained this kneeling position for some minutes, when, by a gradual subsidence of the carcass, he heeled over, and fell heavily on his side. I narrowly escaped being crushed between him and the bank as he sank, just springing out of the way in time. It would have been a fine thing indeed, if, after bagging my first elephant, I had fallen a victim to the collapse of his carcass.” The largest elephant shot by this sportsman measured as follows : — HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT. 105 FT. IN. Vertical height at shoulder . : : ge We | Length from tip of trunk to tip of tail. ea emp? Tusks, each showing out of gum . a 4 When taken out, right aa * 4; “ left 4 11 Circumference at gum Srives eee. Weight (right, 374, left, 37) . ! ‘ . 742 lbs. At the end of a successful trip, when such an elephant has been shot, the sportsman is disposed to be liberal to the trackers; and the following is what Sanderson gave his men : — Rs.1 Present to nine Kurrabas_ . i : ; ; dA al ae Blankets to ditto ‘ ; i : ' ; : SE Present to gun-bearers : : ‘ : 3 . 930 Hologas for cleaning skull . : , jee Warm clothes for servant . 5 : : : ; ole Two carts to Kdkankoté : : F : : A \ ea Tobacco, arrack, and rice . ; ; , ee Sundries. : : ; é ; , ‘ ach G Total : : : : . 150 rupees, or $75 On one occasion, this hunter was following a herd, when two Kurrabas ahead of him began to gesticulate furiously ; and, running ahead, he almost lost his life. He says, ‘“ Not knowing what to make of this, except that there was an ele- phant somewhere in the grass, I ran on, and almost fell into an old and disused pitfall, which now contained an elephant. His head was a little above the level of the ground. As I stepped back quickly, he threw his fore-feet on to the bank, and tried to reach me with his tusks. The whole occurrence 1 A rupee equals two shillings. 106 THE IVORY KING. was so sudden and unexpected, and his rush so startling, that I instinctively pulled the trigger of my four-bore rifle from my hip as I stepped back: there was no time to bring it to my shoulder. The shot went through the base of his right tusk, and buried itself deeply in his neck. He fell backwards; but, recovering himself, he commenced dashing his head with great violence against the sides of the pit in his stupefaction. I therefore took a light gun from Jaffer, and killed him.” The elephant had fallen into the pit some time before, and the herd had immediately deserted it, as, says Sanderson, they always do. In following wild elephants, sportsmen often have favor- able opportunities to observe the habits and customs of the ereat game in their native wilds; and on such an occasion a fight between two tuskers was witnessed. Such an instance is recorded in the following: “ We ran towards the place where the sounds of contest were increasing every moment: a deep ravine at last only separated us from the combatants, and we could see the tops of the bamboos bowing as the monsters bore each other backwards and forwards with a crashing noise in their tremendous struggles. As we ran along the bank of the nullah to find a crossing, one elephant uttered a deep roar of pain, and crossed the nullah some forty yards in advance of us to our side. Here he commenced to destroy a bamboo clump (the bamboos in these hills have a very large hollow, and are weak and comparatively worth- less) in sheer fury, grumbling deeply the while with rage and pain. Blood was streaming the while from a deep stab in his left side high up. He was a very large elephant, with long and fairly thick tusks, and with much white above the forehead: the left tusk was some inches shorter than the HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT. 107 right. The opponent of this Goliath must have been a mon- ster indeed, to have worsted him. “An elephant-fight, if the combatants are well matched, frequently lasts for a day or more, a round being fought every now and then. The beaten elephant retreats tem- porarily, followed leisurely by the other, until, by mutual consent, they meet again. ‘The more powerful elephant occa- sionally keeps his foe in view till he perhaps kills him: other- wise the beaten elephant takes himself off for good on finding he has the worst of it. Tails are frequently bitten off in these encounters. This mutilation is common amongst rogue elephants, and amongst the females in a herd. In the latter case, it is generally the result of rivalry amongst themselves. “The wounded tusker was evidently the temporarily beaten combatant of the occasion; and I have seldom seen such a picture of power and rage as he presented, mowing the bam- boos down with trunk and tusks, and bending the thickest part over with his fore-feet. Suddenly his whole demeanor changed: he backed from the clump, and stood like a statue. Not a sound broke the stillness for an instant. His antago- nist was silent, wherever he was. . Now the tip of his trunk came slowly round in our direction, and I saw that we were discovered to his fine sense of smell. We had been standing silently behind a thin bamboo clump, watching him; and, when I first saw that he had winded us, I imagined that he might take himself off. But his frenzy quite overcame all - fear for the moment. Forward went his ears, and up went his tail, in a way which no one who has once seen the signal in a wild elephant can mistake the significance of; and in the same instant he wheeled about with astonishing swiftness, getting at once into full speed, and bore down upon us. The 108 THE IVORY KING. bamboos, by which we were partly hidden, were useless as a_ cover, and would have prevented a clear shot: so I slipped out into open ground. ‘The instant the elephant commenced his charge, I gave a shout, hoping to stop him, which failed. I had my No. 4 double smooth bore, loaded with ten drachms, in hand. I fired when the elephant was about nine paces off, aiming into his coiled trunk about one foot above the fatal bump between the eyes; as his head was held very high, and this allowance had to be made for its elevation. I felt confident of the shot, but made a grand mistake in not giving him both barrels. It was useless to reserve the left, as I did, at such close quarters; and I deserved more than what fol- lowed for doing so. The smoke from the ten drachms obscured the elephant, and I stepped quickly to see where he lay. Good Heavens! he had not been even checked, and was upon me. ‘There was no time to step to right or left. His tusks came through the smoke (his head being now held low) like the cow-catcher of a locomotive, and I had just time to fall flat to avoid being hurled in front of him. I fell a little to the right. The next instant down came his ponderous foot within a few inches of my left thigh; and I should have been trodden upon had I not been quick enough, when I saw the fore-foot coming, to draw my leg from the sprawling position in which I fell. As the elephant rushed over me, he shrieked shrilly, which showed his trunk was uncoiled; and his head also being held low, instead of in a charging position, I rightly inferred that he was in full flight. Had he stopped, I should have been caught; but the heavy bullet had taken all the fight out of him. Jaffer had been disposed: of by a recoiling bamboo, and was now lying almost in the elephant’s line. Fortunately, however, the brute held on. I was cov- HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT. 109 ered with blood from the wound inflicted by his late antago- nist in his left side: even my hair was matted together when the blood became dry. How it was that I did not bag the elephant, I can’t tell.” A good idea of the excitement and sport of elephant-hunt- ing is obtained from the following account, from the pen of Sir Victor Brooke, of a hunt participated in by him and Col. Douglas Hamilton in the Billiga-rungun hills. The adven- ture is particularly interesting, as the tusks were the largest ever taken in India: — “In July, 1863, Col. Douglas Hamilton and I were shoot- ing in the Hassanoor hills, Southern India. We had had excellent sport, but, until the date of the death of the big tusker, had not come across any elephants. Upon the morn- ing of that day, in the jungles to the east of the Hassanoor bungalow, we had tracked up a fine tusker, which, partly from over-anxiety, and partly, I must confess, from the effect on my nervous system of the presence of the first wild bull elephant I had ever seen, I failed to bag. About mid-day I was lying on my bed, chewing the cud of vexation, and inwardly vowing terrible vengeance on the next tusker I might meet, when two natives came in to report a herd of elephants in a valley some three or four miles to the north of our camp. To prepare ourselves was the work of a few -seconds. As we arrived on the ridge overlooking the valley where the elephants were, we heard the crackling of bamboos, and occasionally caught sight of the track of an elephant as it crossed’ a break amongst the confused mass of tree-tops upon which we were gazing. Presently one of the elephants trumpeted loudly, which attracted the attention of some peo- ple herding cattle on the opposite side of the valley, who, 110 THE IVORY KING. seeing us, and divining our intentions, yelled out, ‘ Anay ! dnay!’ (elephants) at the top of their voices, in the hope, no doubt, of receiving reward for their untimely information. The effect of these discordant human cries was magical. Every matted clump seemed to heave and shake, and vomit forth an elephant. With marvellous silence and quickness the huge beasts marshalled themselves together; and, by the time they appeared on the more open ground of the open valley, a mighty cavalcade was formed, which, once seen, can never be forgotten. ‘There were about eighty elephants in the herd. Towards the head of the procession was a noble bull with a pair of tusks such as are seldom seen in India nowadays. Following him in a direct line came a medley of elephants of lower degree, — bulls, cows, and calves of every size, some of the latter frolicking with comic glee, and run- ning in among the legs of their elders with the utmost confi- dence. It was truly a splendid sight; and I really believe, that, while it lasted, neither Col. Hamilton nor I entertained any feeling but that of intense admiration and wonder. At length this great exhibition was, we believed, over; and we were commencing to arrange our mode of attack when that hove in sight which called forth an ejaculation of astonish- ment from each one of us. Striding along thoughtfully in the rear of the herd, many of the members of which were doubtless his children and his children’s children, came a mighty bull, the like of which neither of my companions after many years of jungle experience, nor the natives who were with us, had ever seen before. But it was not merely the stature of the noble beast that astonished us; for that, though great, could not be considered unrivalled. It was the sight of his enormous tusks, which projected like a HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT. Lit gleam of light through the grass, through which he was slowly wending his way, that held us rooted to the spot. With an almost solemn expression of countenance, Col. Hamilton turned to me, and said, ‘There’s the largest tusker in India, old boy; and, come what may, you must get him, and take his tusk to Ireland with you.’ It was in vain that I expostulated with my dear old friend, recalling my morn- ing’s mishap, and reminding him, that, in jungle laws, it stands written, ‘Shot turn and turn about at elephants.’ It was of no avail. ‘ You must bag that tusker,’ was all the answer I could get. “Tt took us but a short time to run down the slope, and to find the track which swept like a broad avenue along the bed of the valley. Cautiously we followed it up, and, after about a quarter of a mile, came upon the elephants. They were standing in perfect silence around the borders of a small glade, in the middle of which stood the great tusker, quite alone, and broadside to us. He was about fifty yards from us, and therefore out of all elephant-shooting range; but the difficulty was to shorten the distance. The ap- proach direct was impossible, owing to the absolute want of cover: so, after some deliberation, we decided on working to the right, and endeavoring to creep up behind a solitary tree, which stood about twenty yards behind the elephant. When within ten yards of this tree, we found to our annoy- ance a watchful old cow, who was not farther than fifteen yards from us, and to our right, and had decided suspicions of our proximity. To attempt to gain another foot would have been to run the risk of disturbing the elephants. See- ing this, and knowing the improbability of our ever getting the bull outside the herd again, Col. Hamilton recommended 112 THE IVORY KING. me to creep a little to the left, so as to get the shot behind his ear, and to try the effect of my big Purdy rifle, while he kept his eye on the old cow in case her curiosity should induce her to become unpleasant. I should mention that we now, for the first time, perceived that the old bull had only one perfect tusk, the left one being a mere stump, projecting but little beyond the upper lip. I accordingly followed Col. Hamilton’s instructions. At the shot, the old bull, with a shrill trumpet of pain and rage, swung around on his hind- legs as on a pivot, receiving my second barrel, and two from Col. Hamilton. This staggered the old fellow dreadfully ; and, as he stood facing us, Col. Hamilton ran up within twelve yards of him with a very large single-bore rifle, and placed a bullet between his eyes. Had the rifle been as good as it was big, I believe this would have ended the fray ; but, though its shock produced a severe momentary effect, the bullet had, as we afterwards ascertained, only penetrated three or four inches into the cancellous tissue of the frontal bone. After swaying backwards and forwards for a moment or two, during which I gave him both barrels of my second rifle, the grand old beast seemed to rally all his forces, and, rolling up his trunk, and sticking his tail in the air, rushed off trumpeting, and whistling like a steam-engine. “Col. Hamilton followed, and fired two more barrel-shots, while I remained behind to reload the empty rifles. This completed, I joined my friend, whom I found standing in despair at the edge of a small ravine overgrown with tangled underwood, into which the tusker had disappeared. For some little time I found it difficult to persuade Col. Hamilton to continue the chase. Long experience had taught him how rarely elephants once alarmed are met with a second time the HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT. 113 same day. At length, however, finding that I was deter- mined to follow the tracks of the noble beast until I lost them, even should it involve sleeping upon them, my gallant old friend gave way, and entered eagerly into a pursuit which at the time he considered almost, if not absolutely, useless. It would be tedious, even if it were possible, to describe all the details of the long, stern chase which followed. After emerging from the thorny ravine into which the elephant had disappeared, the tracks led over a series of extensive open grassy glades, crossed the Mysore-H4ssanoor road beyond the seventh milestone, and then followed the deep, sandy bed of a dry river for a considerable distance. At length, when about nine weary miles had been left behind us, we began to remark signs of the elephant having relaxed a little in its direct onward flight. His tracks commenced to zigzag back- wards and forwards in an undecided manner, and finally led down a steep, grassy slope into a densely matted, thorny jun- gle bordering a small stream at its foot. Iwas the first to arrive at the edge of the thicket, and without waiting for my companions, who were out of sight, followed the tracks cau- tiously into it. I soon found that it was almost impossible to track the elephant any farther. The entire thicket was traversed by a perfect labyrinth of elephant-paths, and on each path were more or less recent footprints of elephants. Giving up the idea of tracking for a moment, I was on the point of commencing a further exploration of the thicket, when a low hiss attracted my attention ; and, looking around, I saw a native who had accompanied us, beckoning to me, and gesticulating to me in the most frantic manner. Upon going to him, he pointed eagerly in front of him; and, follow- ing the direction of his finger, my eyes alighted, not on the 114 THE IVORY KING. elephant as I expected, but upon Col. Hamilton, who, from behind the trunk of a small tree, was gazing intently towards the little stream, which ran not more than thirty yards from where he was standing. With the greatest care I stole to his side. ‘There he is, in front of you, standing in the stream. You had better take him at once, or he will be off again,’ were the welcome words which greeted my ears. At the same moment my eyes were gratified by the indistinct out- line of the mighty bull, who, already suspicious of danger, was standing perfectly motionless in the middle of the stream, which was so narrow that the branches of the low bamboos on its banks nearly met across it. The distance, twenty- seven yards, was too great for certainty: but there was no choice; as, even if the elephant had been utterly unaware of our vicinity, the tangled, thorny nature of the dense jungle surrounding him would have rendered it impossible to ap- proach nearer without discovery. As it was, the perfect immobility of all save his eye, and every now and then the quickly altered position of his tattered ears, showed undeni- ably that the chances of flight and battle were being weighed in the massive head, and that there was no time to lose. Covering the orifice of the ear with as much ease as if the shot had been at an egg at a hundred yards, I fired. A heavy crash, and the sudden expulsion of the stream from its bed ten or twelve feet into the air, followed the report; and I have a dim recollection of my old friend hugging me the next minute in his delight while he exclaimed, ‘Splen- did, old boy! he’s dead, and the biggest tusker ever killed in India.” But our work was not over yet. With one or two tremendous lurches from side to side, the old bull regained his feet, but only to be again felled by my second barrel, and HUNTING THE ASIATIC ELEPHANT. 115 this time to rise no more. ‘The shades of evening were clos- ing in fast, and a long journey lay between us and home, so we had but a few moments to admire the grandest trophy it has ever fallen to the lot of a sportsman to secure.” This hunt not only shows the endurance required, but the remarkable faculty of the elephant in travelling great dis- tances when so desperately wounded, and the necessity of the heaviest ammunition to prevent prolonged suffering in the noble animals. When an elephant has been shot in the manner described by Sir Victor, the tusks are secured as trophies, and sometimes the head and other parts. They are either cut out with an axe, or left for ten or twelve days, when they can be easily drawn out of the alveole. The lowest Mysore inhabitants will not eat elephant flesh, though they have no objection to carrion; but the Chittagong hill people eat it with avidity. The tail is also used as a trophy; while the feet are taken and upholstered as footstools, and pre- sented to the sportsman’s lady friends. The feet of calves ‘are converted into cigar-boxes, for the fortunate hunter’s gentleman acquaintances; while tobacco-boxes, inkstands, and various articles are also made as mementoes of the hunt. As the elephant shot by Sir Victor Brooke had the largest tusk ever observed in an Asiatic elephant, I give the meas- urements : — RIGHT TUSK. FT. IN. Total length, outside curve. sei Length of part outside socket or ee ore (oiitide - curve) 2 a 9 Length of part jnatéle nee (antatile rake ee a Greatest circumference ; 1 4.9 Weight . cz ‘ ‘ ; . Sees flue 90 lbs. 116 THE IVORY KING. LEFT TUSK. Total length, outside curve Outside socket, outside curve . Inside socket, outside curve Greatest circumference Weight << ae x oe oe ’ THE WHITE ELEPHANT. 117 CHAPTER X. THE WHITE ELEPHANT. ENTION of the white elephant is found in the very early histories of Oriental countries. In a work ealled the “Mahaw Anso,” the animal is described as forming a part of the retinue attached to the Temple of the Tooth at Anarajapoora in the fifth century after Christ; but it commanded no religious veneration, being merely con- sidered as an emblem of royalty. White elephants were so valued in the sixteenth century, that the nations of Pegu and Siam waged a war for many years about one; and, before it was settled, five successive kings were killed, and thousands of men. Horace mentions the white elephant in his “ Epistles.” Democritus would laugh at the populace, — “ Whether a beast of mixed and monstrous birth Bids them with gaping admiration gaze, Or a white elephant their wonder raise.” Elian refers to a white elephant whose mother was black. In the eleventh century Mahmood possessed one, and when mounted upon it in battle he felt assured of victory. The question whether the white elephant was worshipped, or is at the present time, in Burmah or Siam, is of consider- 118 THE IVORY KING. able interest; and authorities vary so, that the seeker after | information is often puzzled. I think that the status of the animal may be fairly expressed in the following. By the most intelligent and refined Burmese and Siamese, it is merely considered as an invaluable adjunct to royalty. It is an important part of the retinue of a court; and its presence is considered a lucky omen, this superstition hay- ing an extremely strong hold upon the princes and kings. The lower classes in some cases may have worshipped the white elephant, and the attention paid to it by royalty may have easily been misunderstood by the uneducated as reverence. The fact that the white elephant is mentioned in the: mythology of the countries, and associated with Buddha, shows that it was undoubtedly reverenced if not worshipped by some; and, if the veneration had not its source in reli- gious feeling, it was so nearly akin to it that it amounted to the same thing. . The Siamese are extremely superstitious ; but, before we condemn them, we must remember how many of our sailors refuse to sail on Friday. How a broken mirror or spilled salt alarms many otherwise intelligent Americans! so that, when we learn from Major Snodgrass that in his time in Burmah a mere grunt from the white elephant was supposed to have some important significance, we need not be sur- prised. Any extraordinary movement or noise made by the animal was quite enough at this time to interrupt the most important affairs, and to cause the most solemn engagement to be broken. Crawford thinks this was merely superstition, and says, “I had here an opportunity, as well as in Siam, of ascertaining that the veneration paid to the white elephant j q THE WHITE ELEPHANT. 119 - had been in some respects greatly exaggerated. The white elephant zs not an object of worship, but it is considered an indispensable part of the regalia of sovereignty. Royalty is incomplete without it; and, the more there are, the more perfect is the state of the kingly office considered. Both the court and the people would consider it as peculiarly inau- spicious to want a white elephant, and hence the repute in which they are held. The lower orders, however, it must be observed, perform the ‘“shiko, or obedience of submission,” to the white elephant; but the chiefs view this as a vulgar superstition, and do not follow it.” On the other hand, Vincent states that the white elephant has been happily termed the Apis of the Buddhists. “It is held to be sacred by all the Indo-Chinese nations except the Annamese. It is revered as a god while living, and its death is regarded as a national calamity. ... Even at the present day the white elephant is worshipped by the lower classes; but by the king and nobles it is revered and valued not so much for its divine character, being the abode of a transmigrating Buddha, as because it is believed to bring prosperity to the court in peace, and good fortune in war. - The more there are of them, the more grand and powerful the state is supposed to be.” From this somewhat conflicting statement, we may infer that the white elephant was formerly worshipped; but, at the present day, the estimate that I have given may be applied. The association of the white elephant with the religious sects of India is well known; but how much it was rever- enced from the association, it is impossible to tell. Sir John Bowring gives the following reasons for believing that the animal was held sacred, principally, “because it is believed 120 THE IVORY KING. that Buddha, the divine emanation from the Deity, must - necessarily, in his multitudinous metamorphoses, or transmis- — sions through all existences, and through millions of eons, delight to abide for some time in that grand incarnation of purity which is represented by the white elephant. While the bonzes teach that there is no spot in the heavens above, or the earth below, or the waters under the earth, which is not visited in the peregrinations of the divinity, — whose every stage or step is towards purification, — they hold that his tarrying may be longer in the white elephant than in any other abode, and that, in the possession of the sacred crea- tures, they may possess the presence of Buddha _ himself. It is known that the Singhalese have been kept in subjection by the belief that their rulers have a tooth of Buddha in the Temple of Kandy; and that, on various tracts of the East, impressions of the foot of Buddha are reverenced, and are the objects of weary pilgrimages to places which can only be reached with difficulty: but with the white elephant some vague notions of a vital Buddha are associated, and there can be no doubt that the marvellous sagacity of the creature has served to strengthen their religious prejudices. ‘Siamese are known to whisper their secrets into an elephant’s ear, and to ask a solution of their perplexities by some sign or move- ment. And most assuredly there is more sense and reason in the worship of an intelligent beast than in that of stocks and stones, the work of men’s hands. Kircher says that “the veneration which, in the Burman Empire, is paid to the white elephant, is in some degree con- nected with the doctrine of metempsychosis. Xaca sustained seventy thousand transmigrations through various animals, and rested in the white elephant.” Hindoo mythology ‘LIL asvyq ‘MOSULYIJNET GD Aopiwg ‘uinusvg fo Apsagord : ) “ONNOTVL ONNOL ‘LNVHdaATaA ALIHM AHL Ne il BEDE: | | i wt lh : —— : 84 522 Wolves . : : : + 13061 9,407 Hyenas . : : : 68 2,116 The Philadelphia elephant Dom, who’was named in honor of Dom Pedro of Brazil, occasionally gave way to fits of rage, became unmanageable ; and people flocked to the garden to see it disciplined. This consisted of securing each foot at a time, and hauling them apart by strong tackles, so that the huge beast was utterly powerless. 150 THE IVORY KING. Travelling around the country seems to irritate elephants, and reports are often seen of their outbursts of rage. The famous Chief, owned by Robinson, became enraged at Char- lotte, N.C., a few years ago, and, without the slightest warn- ing, killed its keeper. The latter was attempting to illustrate to the audience how the elephant climbed into the special car provided for it, when the animal lost its patience, and hurled the unfortunate man against the car with terrific force, kill- ing him before the very eyes of the people. Tom, the pet elephant of the Duke of Edinburgh, who was brought from India in 1870 in H. R. H’s yacht, “ Galatea,” killed its keeper in very much the same way. The greatest elephant panic ever seen in this country was that created by Barnum’s Emperor, who suddenly developed all the characteristics of a rogue, while the circus was ex- hibiting in Troy, N.Y. The trouble commenced when an attempt was made to drive Emperor and Jumbo to the train. The former had decided objections to continuing the tour; and he suddenly bolted, and shuffled furiously up the street in the direction of the iron-foundery of Erastus Corning. The large door being open, the excited animal rushed in, and in a moment was trampling upon the red-hot coal and metal, uttering fierce shrieks. And now utterly enraged and mad, he rushed from the building into the crowded streets, tram- pling upon men, hurling others down an embankment with his trunk, breaking one man’s leg in his flight, throwing another twenty feet into the air, while a woman was taken from — the stoop of a house and hurled into the street. In fact, the — demon of rage seemed to possess the huge creature, that ran — amuck until he had destroyed four thousand dollars’ worth | of property. : ROGUE ELEPHANTS. 151 Another rogue elephant was Romeo, owned by the Fore- paugh Company, who died in Chicago in 1872, having killed three men, and destroyed property valued at fifty thousand dollars. Almost equally vicious was Mr. Barnum’s Albert. This elephant killed its keeper at Keene, N.H.; and, after being loaded with chains, it was led out into the woods, followed by a large crowd, and a company of Keene riflemen. Its trainer, Arstinstall, marked the location of the heart upon the dark hide of the unsuspecting giant; and at the word, the great animal fell. These fits of frenzy are sometimes periodic, and the ele- phant is then said to be must, or mad. The paroxysms vary in different animals. Some are lethargic, or sleepy; while others go mad, and endeavor to wreak vengeance upon any thing within reach. In the chapter on the anatomy of - the elephant, reference is made to a pore in the temple of the animal; and, when expert elephant-men see an oily liquid exuding from this orifice, they accept it as a warning that the period of must is approaching; the elephant is immedi- ately shackled, and keepers and strangers are warned to keep out of reach. . After this secretion has flowed for a while, the temples swell, and the animal is avoided by every one; its food being tossed at it, or pushed toward it on the end of a pole. If, during this time, the elephant escapes, destruction of human hfe is almost sure to follow. They attack every living crea- ture, including their own kind. Sanderson says, “I once saw one of our tuskers, which was then only under suspicion of an approaching fit, break away from the control of his mahout, as he was being ridden to water, and, despite severe 152 THE IVORY KING, punishment, attack, knock down, another elephant near by ; and, had his tusks not been cut, he would, without doubt, have killed her on the spot, He was at last driven off by spears thrown at his trunk and head, Then he stalked across the open plain with his mahout on his neck, fury in his eye, master of all he surveyed, and evidently courting battle from any created being, ‘The men had a difficult and dangerous task to secure him. His hind-legs were at last tied from behind the trunk of a tree, near which he stood ; and the mahout having drawn up a chain by a cord, and secured it around his neck, he was moored fore and aft. I shall never forget the mahout’s fervent ejaculation of ‘Allah! Allah!’ as he slipped over the elephant’s tail when he was made fast.” According to My, Sanderson, the flow of must is observed in both male and female elephants, but never in the tame females. Besides the elephants which are supposed to have bad tempers, and occasionally exhibit them, there are certain animals which are by nature ugly, and more or less untrust- worthy, ‘These are called rogues, and by some, from their seeming love of a solitary life, * solitaries.” The rogue ele- phants, or solitaries, are popularly supposed to be soured in- dividuals, who have been driven from a herd by rivals or companions; but this is a mistake, as investigation has shown that supposed solitaries were often old tuskers graz- ing some distance from a herd, Certain elephants undoubtedly prefer a solitary life: but the so-called solitar is generally a young male who has not been able to assert his position in the herd, and -is grazing along the outskirts; or is an old and bold tusker, who wanders about careless of its safety. ROGUE ELEPHANTS. 153 All seemingly isolated elephants are looked upon with suspicion, as, when met, they often rush to the attack, and prove dangerous enemies. ‘The real rogue is usually a vicious tusker, such as Mandla, an elephant that was owned near Jubbulpore, Central Provinces. This brute was sup- posed to be mad, and, in 1875, suddenly developed a taste for human victims, —rushing at them at sight, attacking houses, or any object that excited its ire, and ultimately killing a large number of persons. ‘This monster not only killed its victims, but is said to have eaten them, tearing the bodies limb from limb, and was known before its death as the man- eater. ‘This is probably an exaggeration; the fact being, that the elephant took the victim in its mouth while it tore him in pieces, the demoralized natives thinking that it was eating him. An organized hunt was made for this elephant, and it was finally killed by two English officers. A few years ago elephants in various parts of India, es- pecially about Morlay, became so fearless, that they entered fields adjoining the towns, and did great damage; some, showing the disposition of the typical rogue, could hardly be driven away. In one case in India, a number of Oopligas drove a herd into the hills with their horns and tomtoms; and, a heavy rain coming on, they thought it hardly necessary to keep up the guard, so retired from the field. In the morn- ing, they found that a valuable lot of the Indian maize (Sorghum vulgare) had been destroyed, the entire herd re- turning as soon as the noise had ceased. Mr. Sanderson caught this entire herd in 1874. About thirty years before the man-eating elephant was heard of, a male rogue elephant created great devastation in the fields of the Morlayites. It was continually breaking 154 THE IVORY KING. into their rice; but one morning, being seen near a village, the entire population turned out, and with hue and cry gave chase. The rogue, who was also a coward, dashed away, rushing blindly into a marsh, or morass, and soon sank to its knees in soft mud, and was almost completely at the mercy of the pursuers. They surrounded it, and rained stones and other missiles upon it; and finally, one native, more revenge- ful and cruel than the others, threw some lighted straw upon the poor creature’s back. The terrible wounds seemed to — spur it to greater exertions; and it finally escaped, and ultimately recovered, being often seen and recognized by its scars. Sanderson mentions two tuskers which travelled about together, “twin solitaries.” They were extremely vicious, had killed people, and were finally proscribed by the govern- ment. One of the tuskers was killed by Mr. Sanderson in 1870. Referring to rogue elephants which he had observed, he says, “‘I had just finished dinner, and was enjoying a smoke before a blazing camp-fire, which lit to their topmost branches a pair of magnificent tamarind-trees, under which my tent was pitched, when I heard a distant shout of ‘Anay!’ (ele- phants). At once, lights began to flit over the plain, moving towards one point; tomtoms were beaten, and rattles made from split bamboo sounded. An elephant trumpeted shrilly, the men yelled in defiance, till the intruders retreated to the jungle. ‘The cover bordering on cultivation was so dense as to afford secure shelter to elephants close at hand, even during the day. After some little time, when the tomtom- ming and noise had ceased, a similar commotion took place at another point: again the Will-o’-the-wisp lights moved for- ward, with a repetition of the shouting and trumpeting. ROGUE ELEPHANTS. 155 The villagers who were keeping up my camp-fire told me that it was only on occasional nights that the elephants visited cultivation. The watchers were evidently in fer it now, and they became thoroughly alert at all points. “Once the elephants came within two hundred yards of my camp; and, long after I went to bed, I heard the shouting and rattling of the watchers. These men were the Strolagas from the hills: they were hired annually for a month or two, at a fixed payment in grain, for watching their crops, by the low-country cultivators, who are themselves less able to stand the exposure on a rice-flat, and less bold in interfer- ing with elephants. The watchers provide themselves with torches of light split bamboos in bundles, about eight feet long, and eight inches in diameter. These are lighted at one end, when required, and make a famous blaze. Armed with them, the men sally forth to the spot where the elephants are feeding. Some carry the torches; the others precede them, so as to have the light behind them. The elephants can be seen on open ground one hundred yards, should they wait to let the lights get so close. Some troublesome rogues get beyond caring for this; though the men are very bold, and approach within forty or fifty yards. Natives have often told me of particular elephants letting them get within a few yards, and then putting their trunks into their mouths, and withdrawing water, squirting it at the lights. I hardly need say that the latter part of the statement is purely imaginary ; the idea doubtless arising from the attitude elephants often assume when in uncertainty or perplexity, putting the trunk into the mouth, and holding the tip gently between the lips.” The large area of rice-fields on the bed of the Honganoor Lake was assessed long ago at one-third the usual rates, on _ 156 THE IVORY KING. account of. the depredations of elephants. Mr. Sanderson adds, however, that the actual damage done to crops by ele- phants is much less than popularly supposed. In capturing wild elephants, numbers of tuskers which have escaped, often follow the herd, and wander about the camps at night. On one occasion, a large female charged a tame elephant and rider. The latter was warned by a native, and - slipped around his elephant’s neck just in time to save his life ; but the jaws of the old rogue struck his thigh, and she endeavored to crush him with her single tusk. He drove his goad into her mouth, when she drew off, and came on again at full speed. The rider again dodged over his elephant’s neck, and a second time the single tusk struck his leg. This was repeated several times; and the rider, whose ele- phant was in the midst of a herd of wild ones in a corral, was in despair, when one of his assistants hurled a spear, striking the rogue in the head. A moment later, the latter’s elephant struck her a terrific blow, head on, almost knocking her over, and completely turning the scales. _ Tame tuskers, under the direction of a mahout, soon out- wit wild elephants in a battle. Females rarely fight among themselves; but, when they do, their spite is vented upon one another in a ludicrous and aggravating manner, by biting off each other’s tails. | Sanderson had a singular adventure with a rogue elephant who attempted to enter his tent at night. He started to his feet, first seeing his tent rip, and, on looking out, discovered that a wild elephant was tearing it with its tusks. The next day, it was found torn in two, with two tusk-holes in it. The next night a guard of men and a tame elephant was established; but at midnight, he was awakened by feeling ROGUE ELEPHANTS. 157 the tent shake. Leaping to his feet, he looked out, saw the men asleep, and the tame elephant some distance off. While he stood, there came a crash, and the small tent fell in; when he found that probably the same elephant was investi- gating again; but, before he could clear himself from the canvas, it had made off, startled by the noise. The attack was probably made out of mere curiosity, or, perhaps, in a spirit of mischief. They have been known to trample down embankments, overturn telegraph-poles, haul up surveying- pins ; and once, when a surveying-party left their chain over night in a jungle, it could be heard jingling occasionally, the elephants evidently being pleased with the sound it made. -A famous rogue elephant for months devastated the coun- try about Kakankoté. It first destroyed the crops; and gradually becoming bolder and bolder, it finally actually took possession of a strip of the country about eight miles long, including a part of the main road between Mysore and the Wynaad. No one dared to travel in the road; the mon- ster charging every one, finally killmg two natives. This aroused the populace; and the amildar, or native official, ap- pealed to the government elephant-keeper for protection. A few days later, he was on the ground, and, with a party of Kurrabas trackers, was ready to slay the rogue. So great was the alarm, that the hunter found native policemen at the entrance of the jungle, to warn travellers of the elephant; and all who went through were preceded by natives, who, with tomtoms and other instruments, endeavored to frighten the brute, who was well known to every one by his large size, black color, and peculiar, up-curved, short tusks. For several days the professional hunter followed the great ani- mal, and came up with him; but, by an unfortunate stam- 158 THE IVORY KING. pede, he lost him, and the hunt had to be given up for the time. Five months later it was renewed: and, after a long chase, the rogue was found in a bamboo thicket; then, after waiting for a fair shot, the hunter fired a heavy bullet, putting it just behind the shoulder. For a second, there was a deathly silence, then, with a ter- rific scream, the monster dashed away; and the men, in full pursuit, were soon covered with blood that flowed from the wounds. The rogue ran for two hundred yards, and, when the Kurrabas came upon him, presented a terrible appear- ance. He was facing his foes, his trunk doubled, head ele- vated, and blood rushing from his mouth; yet the animal’s eyes were gleaming with fury, and it was ready to sell its life dearly. The hunter fired with a four-bore rifle; the bullet penetrating the brain, and killing him upon the spot. As the huge creature rolled over, the men crawled upon its upper side, which was six feet from the grass. The head and feet were taken; the former being placed on the main road for some time, to inform the natives that the end of the rogue had come. The tusks of this elephant were small, being ten inches in circumference at the gum, and weighed twenty-two and a half pounds, curving up in a curious way. Capt. Dunlop, of the British army, refers to a rogue ele- phant in the Doon, named Gunesh. It was the property of the government, but escaped, and for years caused a reign of terror in the country. It had a chain upon its leg, and the clank of this in the jungle near a village demoralized the entire populace. For fifteen years this brute wandered about, destroying rice-fields; and, during that time, it killed over fifteen persons. ROGUE ELEPHANTS. 159 Another rogue followed a courier of the English postal service, and trampled him to death. While the canal of Beejapore was being made, a rogue elephant charged upon the men from some bushes, and seized one; then, pressing the body under its ponderous feet, the fiend deliberately pulled away the upper portion of it, and with a remnant in its trunk ran back into the bush. Some woodmen engaged in cutting trees in the jungle about Chandnee-Doon, had an almost identical experience. | One day three of them remained at home; while, during the day, one of the men went to a neighboring spring to draw some water. As he did not return, one of his companions went after him; and that evening they were both found dead, their bones being crushed and broken. The rogue had seized and thrown them to the ground, crushing them by a tread of its ponderous foot. In Ceylon, the rogue is called a hora, or ronkedor; the Singhalese, according to Tennent, believing it to be an in- dividual that has either lost its associates by accident, and, from its solitary life, become morose and savage; or a natu- rally vicious individual, that, being more daring, has sepa- rated itself from its companions. Whatever may be the reason for the savage temper exhibited by these solitary brutes, they constitute a characteristic of elephant life, and, in Ceylon, seem to possess the same likes and dislikes that mark the African and Asiatic rogues. More daring than the peacefully disposed elephants, they come out of the jungle at night, and prowl around the towns and villages, trampling down cultivated tracts, devouring the standing rice and young cocoa-palms, becoming so bold in some places, that one has been known to enter a field, and 160 THE IVORY KING. seize a sheaf from a pile in the very midst of a party of workers, who fled in terror. As a rule, however, they remain concealed by day, committing their depredations by night. In some sections, as the low country of Badulla, the villagers build moats or ditches about their huts to protect themselves from the rogues. Certain localities seem to be infested by these creatures. Thus, in 1847, a dangerous rogue frequented the Rangbodde Pass on a mountain road, that led to the Sanitarium at Neuera-ellia, and demoralized the entire country so that people were afraid to undertake the pass unless in numbers. Its method of attack was to seize natives, as it did a Caffre of the Caffre Corps of pioneers, with its trunk, and beat the victim to death against the bank. Some years ago a native trader and party were travelling near Idalgasinna, when they suddenly heard the shrill trum- peting of a rogue. The entire company took to their heels; the coolies casting away their goods, and making for the jungle. The trader himself hid behind a large rock, and saw the elephant seize one of the coolies, and, after carrying him a short distance, dash him to the ground, and trample upon him; then turning to the goods they carried, he tore them in pieces, after which he walked into the jungle. This ele- phant was a noted rogue, and in its time destroyed the lives of a number of people. He was finally killed by an English sportsman. A native made a statement to a Singhalese gentleman, who in turn imparted the information to Sir Emerson Ten- nent, that once, when he was on his way to Badulla, and walking around a hill, a large elephant rushed upon his party without warning, trumpeting loudly. In a moment, he le ROGUE ELEPHANTS. 161 had seized the native’s companion, who, it happened, was in the rear, and killed him by hurling him to the ground. Dropping the first victim, he then seized the narrator of the incident, and hurled him aloft with such force that he landed in the branches of a cahata-tree, and lodged there, thus es- caping with only a dislocation of the wrist. The elephant returned to the body upon the ground, and tore it limb from limb, mutilating it as much as possible. Rogue elephants in Ceylon are often very mischievous. In some sections, the tracing-pegs that have been put down by surveyors during one day, are pulled up the next by ele- phants. Rogues, like other elephants, are very suspicious. Col. Hardy, at one time deputy quartermaster-general in Ceylon, was travelling to an outpost in the south-eastern por- tion of the island, and one day became lost, and was attacked at dusk by a rogue. He ran for cover, but was almost caught, when he happened to think of his dressing-case ; and, throwing it down, his pursuer came to an immediate stand- still, stopping to examine it carefully, while the officer escaped. Other rogues destroy every thing they can find. In “The Colombo Observer” of March, 1858, there was a reward of twenty-five guineas offered for the destruction of an elephant that had taken up its residence in the Rajawallé coffee-plantation near Kandy. ‘The huge animal terrified the people for miles about; its plan being, to come out of the jun- gle at night, and pull down buildings and trees on the plan- tation. It seemed to have an especial spite for the pipes of the water-works, the pillars of which it tore down; while the tops were all destroyed by this curious animal, who was finally shot. 162 THE IVORY KING. Some years ago a rogue elephant was wounded near the town of Hambangtotte by a native, and followed the latter into the town in a wild race, catching him in the bazaar in the midst of the town, and trampling him to death before a crowd of people, then making good its escape. Often tame elephants, excited by some means, become rogues for the time. During one of the attempts by the government to capture an entire herd in Ceylon, a fine tame . tusker became intensely excited, and finally, in a frenzy of rage, broke down the bars of the corral with its head and tusks, and ran into the jungle. A few days later, its driver went after it with a decoy; when it approached, he cour- ageously leaped upon the back of the maddened beast, and with a pair of hooks subdued it, until it was firmly chained, when it allowed itself to be led away. That elephants do not easily forget, is shown in case of one that turned rogue, and escaped to the-jungle, and, when recaptured ten years later, immediately obeyed the mahout’s command to kneel. That rogue elephants are sometimes the result of inhu- man treatment, is shown in a terrible catastrophe, reported by an Indian correspondent of ‘The Pall Mall Gazette” as occurring in April of the present year, in which seventeen human beings lost their lives, and much valuable property was destroyed. : ‘While an elephant was being ridden by its keeper in the District of Sultanpore, in Oude, the animal resented ‘ prod- ding’ with a spear, by pulling the man from his back, and throwing him some distance away. Fortunately the man fell in a hollow, and remained there undiscovered by the elephant, who went to a neighboring village. There he ———— mote ROGUE ELEPHANTS. 163 chased an old man into a house, then broke down the walls, pulled the man out, and dashed him to pieces. The same night the elephant knocked down several houses in quest of human beings, in the villages of Sardapur, Bargaon, and Jaisingpur. He killed six men in Bersoma, three in Sota, four in Gaugeo, and fourin Mardan. He likewise killed a bullock and a pony, and also completely destroyed a new carriage. The animal used to stand at the door of a house, force his entry by demolishing the walls on either side, and would then kill as many of the inmates as he could, pursu- ing others who tried to run away. He mangled the corpses terribly. After securing a victim, he sometimes returned to the spot to see if life were extinct, and would commence mutilating the body afresh. He carried several bodies long distances, and threw them into ravines, ete. The elephant found his way to the Dehra Rajah’s palace, where he tried to enter the house of a gardener; but some men mounted on three elephants, assisted by spearmen, drove him off. He then returned to Bebipur, where he tried to break down his master’s house, in which several persons had taken refuge. The police got into the house from a back window, and were obliged to send for help to the Dehra Rajah, who sent three elephants and some spearmen. The animal received two gun-shots on the head at Bebipur, which, however, only tem- porarily drove him off. He was ultimately captured at im- minent risk, by the rajah’s three elephants and men.” 164 THE IVORY KING. CHAPTER XIII. HUNTING THE AFRICAN BLEPHANT. ROM the huge size of its body and tusks, the African elephant affords, if any thing, a better opportunity of testing the skill and endurance of the hunter than its Asiatic ally. In former years, the great game was found from the Southern limit of Sahara to Cape Town; but so insatiate has been the greed for ivory, that it has been gradually driven from the more exposed tracts, and is now confined to the most unfrequented parts of the great continent; and as it is only with great difficulty and incalculable hardship that it can be followed, the animal is rarely hunted at the present day for pure sport, the ivory tusks alone being the desidera- tum. As about one hundred thousand elephants are killed every year, and they are slow breeders, their utter exter- mination seems only a matter of time. If the present depletion of the numbers of the African species continues, it will be but a memory of the past in a comparatively few years. The African elephant is followed in several ways. Some hunters, as Baldwin, prefer to depend upon horses, and, so mounted, follow the herd at full speed, leaping from the saddle, firmg quickly, and avoiding the charge by the fleet- ness of the horse. Others, as Selous, préfer shooting on HUNTING THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 165 foot. The latter met with an extraordinary adventure while following a fine elephant, and narrowly escaped. The follow- ing is his account : — ‘“‘ My horse was now so tired that he stood well; so, reining in, I gave her a shot from his back between the neck and the shoulder, which I believe just stopped her from charging. On receiving this wound, she backed a few paces, gave her ears a flap against her sides, and then stood facing me again. I had just taken out the empty cartridge, and was about to put a fresh one in, when, seeing that she looked very vicious, and as I was not thirty yards from her, I caught the bridle, and turned the horse’s head away, so as to be ready for a fair start in case of a charge. I was still holding my rifle with the breech open, when I saw that she was coming. Digging the spurs into my horse’s ribs, I did my best to get him away; but he was so thoroughly done, that instead of spring- ing forwards, which was what the emergency required, he only started at a walk, and was just breaking into a canter when the elephant was upon us. I heard two short, sharp screams above my head, and had just time to think it was all over with me, when, horse and all, I was dashed to the ground. Fora few seconds I was half stunned by the vio- lence of the shock; and the first thing I became aware of, was a very strong smell of elephant. At the same instant, I felt that I was still unhurt, and that, though in an unpleasant predicament, I had still a chance for life. I was, however, pressed down on the ground in such a way that I could not extricate my head. At last, with a violent effort I wrenched myself loose, and threw my body over sideways, so that I rested on my hands. As I did so, I saw the hind-legs of the elephant standing like two pillars before me, and at once 166 THE IVORY KING. grasped the situation. She was on her knees, with her head and tusks in the ground; and I had been pressed down under her chest, but luckily behind her fore-legs. Dragging myself from under her, I regained my feet, and made a hasty retreat, having had rather more than enough of elephants for the time being. I retained, however, sufficient presence of mind to run slowly, watching her movements over my shoulder, and directing mine accordingly. Almost immedi- ately I had made my escape, she got up, and stood looking for me with her ears up and head raised, turning first to one side, and then to the other, but never wheeling quite round. _ As she made these turns, I ran obliquely to the right or left, — as the case might be, always endeavoring to keep her stern towards me. At length I gained the shelter of a small bush, and breathed freely once more. * All this time I never saw my horse, which must have been lying amongst the grass where he had been thrown to the ground. I thought he was dead; or perhaps, to speak more truly, I was so engrossed with my own affairs that I did not think about him at all. I stood now just on the highest ground of a gentle rise, which sloped gradually down to an open glade, in which, from where I was, I could see two dead elephants. Just then I saw a Caffre coming across the opening, and went down to meet him, leaving my ele- phant still standing on the spot where she had knocked me down. Being unarmed, —for my gun had been dashed from my hand when I fell, —TI dared not go near her to look for it. Upon meeting the Caffre, I hastily told him what had hap- pened. The elephant was not now visible, being just beyond the crest of the rise, about two hundred yards distant; but I only stopped to take some cartridges from my trousers PLATE XIll. We Ss ae. i 3 N LEANING AGAINST A TREE, ELEPHA N AFRICA Pages 17 and 165. HUNTING THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 167 pocket, and put them in my belt, and then, accompanied by the boy, returned to the scene of the accident to look for my rifle, and see what had become of my horse. On topping the rise, we saw him standing without the saddle; but the elephant had walked away, and was no longer visible. Going up to my horse, I found that he had received an ugly wound in the buttock from behind, from which the blood was stream- ing down the leg: otherwise, barring a few abrasions, he was unhurt. Whilst the boy was searching for my rifle, I looked round for the elephant, which I knew had only just moved away, and, seeing a cow standing amongst some bushes not two hundred yards from me, made sure it was the one that had so nearly made an example of me. The Caffre now came up with my rifle and saddle, the girth of which was broken. The rifle, having been open at the breech when it fell to the eround, was full of sand; so that it was not until I had taken the lever out, using the point of the Caffre’s assegai for a screw-driver, that I managed to get it to work. I then ap- proached the elephant, which all the time had been standing where I first saw her, and, cautiously advancing to within fifty yards of her, took a careful aim, and gave her a shot behind the shoulder, which brought her to the ground with a crash. Pushing in another cartridge, I ran up, and gave her a shot in the back of the head to make sure of her.” Hunters do not always escape so fortunately as did Mr. Selous. One of the native hunters employed by him, named Quabeet, followed a bull elephant into the bush, and was never seen alive again. The brute must have laid in wait for him, and rushed out, taking him unawares. The bushes around the locality were levelled to the ground; and, when finally the body was discovered, it was torn in three pieces. 168 THE “IVORY KING. ‘The, chest, with head and arms attached, which had been wrenched from the trunk just below the breast-bone, lying in one place; one leg and thigh, that had been torn off at the pelvis, in another; and the remainder in a third. The right arm had been broken in two places, and the hand crushed; one of the thighs was also broken; but otherwise the frag- ment had not been trampled on. There is little reason to doubt,” continues Selous, “that the infuriated elephant must have pressed the unfortunate man down with his foot or knee, and then, twisting his trunk round his body, wrenched him asunder. This feat gives one an idea of the awful strength of these huge beasts, and how powerless the strong- est of men.” Sometimes the elephant is attacked with javelins, or spears, and so killed. Dr. Livingstone thus describes an instance that he witnessed : — “JT had retired from the noise, to take observations among some rocks of laminated grit, when I beheld an elephant and her calf at the end of a valley, about two miles distant. The calf was rolling in the mud, and the dam was fanning herself with her great ears. As I looked at them through my glass, I saw a long string of my own men approaching on the other side of them. I then went higher up the side of the valley, in order to have a distinct view of their mode of hunting. The goodly beast, totally unconscious of the approach of an enemy, stood for some time suckling her young one, which seemed about two years old: then they went into a pit containing mud, and smeared themselves all over with it; the little one frisking about his dam, flapping his ears, and tossing his trunk incessantly in elephantine fashion. She kept flapping her ears, and wagging her tail, as HUNTING THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 169 if in the height of enjoyment. Then began the piping of her enemies, which was performed by blowing into a tube, or the hands closed together, as boys do intoakey. They called out, to attract the animal’s attention, — ‘QO chief, chief! we have come to kill you: O chief, chief! many others will die beside you; The gods have said it,’ etc. Both animals expanded their ears, and listened, then left their bath. As the crowd rushed towards them, the little one ran forward to the end of the valley, but, seeing the men, returned to his dam. She placed herself on the dangerous side of her calf, and passed her proboscis over it again and again, as if © to assure it of safety. She frequently looked back to the men, who kept up an incessant shouting, singing, and piping; then looked at her young one, and ran after it, sometimes sidewise, as if her feelings were divided between anxiety to protect her offspring, and desire to revenge the temerity of her persecutors. The men kept about a hundred yards in her rear, and some that distance from her flanks, and continued thus until she was obliged to cross a rivulet. “The time spent in descending and getting up the opposite bank allowed of their coming up to the edge and discharging their spears at about sixty feet distance. After the first dis- charge, she appeared with her sides red with blood, and, begin- ning to flee for her own life, seemed to think no more of her young. I had previously sent off Sekweba with orders to spare the calf. He ran very fast, but neither young nor old ever enter into a gallop: their quickest pace is only a sharp walk. Before Sekweba could reach them, the calf had taken refuge in the water, and was killed. The pace of the dam 170 THE IVORY KING. gradually became slower: she turned with a shriek of rage, and made a furious charge back among the men. They van- ished at right and left angles from her course; and, as she ran right on, she went through the whole party, but came near no one, except a man who wore a piece of cloth on his shoulders. She charged three or four times, and, except in the first in- stance, never went farther than one hundred yards. She often stood, after she had crossed a rivulet, and faced the men, though she received fresh spears. It was by this process of spearing, and loss of blood, that she was killed; for at last, making a short struggle, she staggered round, and sank down dead, in a kneeling position.” While this method is certainly a fair one, —the natives ex- posing themselves, and meeting the elephant in the open field, —it seems a murderous operation to torture such a noble animal, especially when she is defending her young. Among the narrow escapes of elephant-hunters in Africa may be mentioned Mr. Oswold. He was fleeing from an elephant, near the shores of the Zonga, when his horse stum- bled, and he fell in a thicket, face to the huge brute who was coming like an avalanche —a veritable mountain of flesh. He gave himself up as lost; but, by a miracle, the animal passed within a few inches, missing him in its blind rage. Elephants are remarkable for their scent, and hunters always try to keep to the leeward. Charles Volk, a Dutch- man, while hunting, concealed himself in the brush, hoping to take an elephant unawares. But he was in the wrong direction: the great game scented him, and a moment later was upon the unfortunate hunter, and had crushed him into a shapeless mass. On another occasion, a party came upon two large elephants in an open spot. They immediately made HUNTING THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 171 for cover, the hunters wounding a female as she ran. Hoping to cut off her retreat, they put spurs to their horses, and were well upon her, when the male, a large tusker, charged upon them from a thicket. Some of the men had dismounted to fire; and, though taken by surprise, they succeeded in reach- ing their horses, with the exception of a young man, who was standing with his arm through the bridle, and loading his gun. The infuriated animal caught him before he could move, drove both his tusks through his body, and tossed him dead and bleeding a great height into the air; then, returning to its mate, both animals made off. Karol Kreiger’s name is often mentioned by the Dutch African colonists as a bold hunter, who killed many elephants in his day, and was extremely fortunate in avoiding their rushes. He finally met his death while engaged in the sport of his choice. He was following a wounded elephant, when the latter suddenly whirled about as if on a pivot, took him in its trunk, and tossed him like a ball into the air, and, when he fell, trampled him underfoot in a frenzy of rage. When the body was recovered, it was completely torn in pieces. While Europeans are remarkably courageous in facing a charging elephant, they are exceeded in daring by the Ham- ran Arabs, who, without any of the appliances of a modern sportsman, face the largest and most ferocious elephants with a simple sword and shield. The Hamran Arabs are skilled horsemen, and are distinguished from their country- men of other tribes by the length of their hair, which is worn in long curls, and parted in the centre. Their sole method of defence and attack is the sword and shield. The latter is of two kinds: one is circular in shape, either of rhino- ceros or giraffe hide, stiffened by a stout piece of wood that 172 THE IVORY KING. passes down the centre. The shield is about two feet in diameter, and resembles, according to Baker, a broad hat with a low crown terminating in a point. In the crown, there is a bar of leather used as a grip; while the outside is protected by a piece of scaly crocodile-hide. The swords, which are manufactured at Sollingen, are all of one pattern, being longer or shorter according to the strength of the owner. The blade is long and straight and two-edged ; the guard being a simple bar, or cross, a fashion presumably adopted after the Crusades. Some of the wealthy Arabs decorate the handles with silver; and a good sword is highly prized, and handed down from generation to generation. Metal scabbards are not used; the case being two thin strips of an elastic, soft wood covered with leather, all of which is to preserve the edge; for this double-edged weapon is so deli- cate and keen, that it will cut a hair, and could be used as arazor. On the march, the sword is looked after with the greatest care, and is slung from the pommel of the saddle, passing beneath the thigh. When the Arab dismounts, he invariably draws it, and, after examining both edges, strops it upon his shield, and, having shaved a hair from his arm, returns it to the scabbard. The swords are about three feet five inches in length; and about nine inches of the blade is bound with cord, which is grasped with the right hand, the left seizing the handle, so that it becomes a two-handed weapon. Thus armed, four aggageers, as the professional elephant-hunters are called, are ready to attack the largest elephant. Their method is, if they have no horses, to follow the great game on foot, and endeavor, between the hours of ten A.M. and twelve M., to find one sleeping. If this can be accomplished, they steal upon it, HUNTING THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 173 and with one blow of the terrible sword sever the trunk, pro- ducing a wound from which the elephant will die in an hour. A well-equipped party, however, consists of four aggageers on horseback. When the trail of a herd is struck, they dash in pursuit; and when the animals are discovered, endeavor to single out the largest tusker, generally an old bull. Gal- loping after the fleeing elephant, they soon gain on it, and endeavor to make it turn and charge,—a matter of little difficulty. The men now have each a duty to perform. One places himself immediately in front of the animal, and tries to attract its attention, as does the matador in the bull-fight. This is a most dangerous position; as, if the horse stumbles before the desperate charges of the enraged animal, both horse and rider will be crushed to death. But, while the nimble aggageer in front is tantalizing the great beast, the others are watching their opportunity. Galloping up behind the fleeing animal until within a foot or so of its heels, one springs to the ground lightly, sword in hand, though at full speed, and, racing along on foot for a few sec- onds, strikes the elephant a terrific blow, severing the back sinew of the foot, so that*the first pressure after the stroke dislocates the joint. As the hunter leaps to the ground, his companion seizes his horse, and, as soon as the blow is made, he remounts: two or three ride near the unfortunate elephant’s trunk, to give the third aggageer an opportunity to sever the sinew of the other hind-foot, which is soon done; and the huge animal, thus helpless, is literally killed by two blows of a sword. The force of the blow given in this way can be imagined when it is known that a native has been seen to sever the spine of a wild boar at a single stroke. The aggageers often \ 174 THE IVORY KING. meet with terrible accidents. One employed by Sir S. W. Baker had his leg almost severed by his own sword. Another Arab, Roder Sherrif, had had his horse killed from under him by an elephant, whose tusk at the same time entered his arm, rendering it useless for life. Yet this maimed man was considered the finest hunter, and always chose the most dangerous post, running ahead of the elephant’s trunk to attract its attention; and it was in doing this that he had met with the terrible wounds. The wonderful daring of these hunters, of whom Sir 8. W. Baker said that he felt like taking off his hat to, is well shown in the following account given by that well-known hunter | and explorer :— “Having the wind fair, we advanced quickly for about half the distance, at which time we were within a hundred and fifty yards of the elephant, which had just arrived at the water, and had commenced drinking. We now crept cautiously towards him. The sand-bank had decreased to a height of about two feet, and afforded very little shelter. Not a tree nor bush grew upon the surface of the barren sand, which was so deep that we sank nearly to the ankles at every footstep. Still we crept forward, as the elephant alternately drank, and then spouted the water in a shower over his colossal form; but, just as we had arrived within about fifty yards, he happened to turn his head in our direction, and immediately perceived us. He cocked his enormous ears, gave a short trumpet, and for an instant he wavered in his determination whether to attack or fly; but, as I rushed towards him with a shout, he turned towards the jungle, and I immediately fired a steady shot at the shoulder with the ‘Baby.’ As usual, the fearful recoil of tt as ee ee ae a ee eee HUNTING THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 175 the rifle, with a half-pound shell and twelve drachms of powder, nearly threw me backwards; but I saw the mark upon the elephant’s shoulder in an excellent line, although rather high. The only effect of the shot was to send him off at great speed towards the jungle. But at the same moment the three aggageers came galloping across the sand, like grey- hounds in a course, and, judiciously keeping parallel with the jungle, they cut off his retreat; and, turning towards the elephant, they confronted him, sword in hand. At once the furious beast charged straight at the enemy. But now came the very gallant but foolish part of the hunt. Instead of leading the elephant by the flight of one man and horse, according to their usual method, all the aggageers at the moment sprang from their saddles; and upon foot, in the heavy sand, they attacked the elephant with their swords. “In the way of sport, I never saw any thing so magnifi- cent, or so absurdly dangerous. No gladiatorial exhibition in the Roman arena could have surpassed this fight. The elephant was mad with rage; and, nevertheless, he seemed to know that the object of the hunters was to get behind him. This he avoided with great dexterity, turning, as it were, upon a pivot with extreme quickness, and charging headlong, first at one, and then at another, of his assailants, while he blew clouds of sand in the air with his trunk, and screamed with fury. Nimble as monkeys, nevertheless the aggageers could not get behind him. In the folly of excitement, they had forsaken their horses, which had escaped from the spot. The depth of the loose sand was in favor of the elephant, and was so much against the men, that they avoided his charges with extreme difficulty. It was only by the deter- mined pluck of all three, that they alternately saved each 176 THE IVORY KING. other; as two invariably dashed in at the flanks when the : elephant charged the third, upon which the wary animal im- mediately relinquished the chase, and turned round upon his pursuers. During this time, I had been laboring through the heavy sand; and, shortly after I arrived at the fight,'the ele- phant charged directly through the aggageers, receiving a shoulder-shot from one of my Reilly No. 10 rifles, and, at the same time, a slash from the sword of Abou Do, who, with great dexterity and speed, had closed in behind him, just in time to save the leg. Unfortunately, he could not deliver the cut in the right place, as the elephant, with increased speed, completely distanced the aggageers: he charged across the deep sand, and reached the jungle. We were shortly upon his tracks; and, after running about a quarter of a mile, he fell dead in a dry water-course. His tusks, like the generality of Abyssinian elephants, were exceedingly short, but of good thickness.” The tactics employed in shooting Asiatic elephants are not always successful when applied to the African species; and the forehead-shot, referred to in the chapter-on hunting the Asiatic elephant, is rarely made. The only forehead-shot that Sir S. W. Baker ever made was on the Settite River; the ball entering the base of the trunk, and lodging in the vertebree of the neck,—a chance shot. At fifty feet, the temple-shot is often made; but the old hunters generally aim at the shoulder, or just behind it. The flesh of the elephant is greatly esteemed by some native Africans, especially the fat ; while the feet, when well cooked, are considered delicacies by some European hunters. When the Bechuanas obtain a dead elephant, they not only enter the body, and literally mine for the fat, — hacking HUNTING THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 177 it out, and passing it to their comrades, — but besmear them- selves with the blood from head to foot, considering that it will bring them good luck. The native Africans have never been known to tame or utilize the elephant: though, in what is known as the fly country, they are the only animals perfectly free from attack, and would be of the greatest value, and a great saving of life, as it is estimated that every tusk that comes out from the interior of Africa, causes the death of at least one slave or native. That the African elephant was hunted in very early times, is very evident. On an Egyptian tomb at Qournah, of the time of Thothmes III., there is a representation of the ele- phant, telling the story of the tribute brought by the people of the upper Euphrates to that prince in 1500 B.C. The celebrated black obelisk (now in the collection of the British Museum) of Shalmaneser II. (858-823 B.C.) bears a deline- ation of an elephant which formed part of a tribute brought by the Muzri, a people of Kurdistan at the head waters of the Tigris, to the Assyrian monarch. The human figures on the stone are shown bearing elephants’ tusks upon their shoulders. These inscriptions and figures, while they may be consid- ered a part of the adornment of obelisks and tombs, are, in reality, the historical records of the time; and the represen- tations of the elephant are often of value in showing its geographical distribution in former times. Thus, according to the stele of Amenemheb, an officer of the time of Thoth- mes III. and Amenophis II., translated by M. Chabas, the elephant was hunted near Nineveh, in the reign of Thothmes III.; and that there were found in great numbers, is shown 178 | THE IVORY KING. by the statement, that the king “captured one hundred and twenty elephants for the sake of their tusks in the country of Nineveh.” Later than this, according to an Assyrian in- scription on the prism of Tiglath-pileser I. (1120 B.C.), now in London, the elephant was hunted on the Tigris. The account translated reads, “I killed ten full-grown elephants in the country of Harran; and on the banks of the Khabour [an affluent of the Tigris], I captured four elephants alive. I brought their skins and their tusks, with the living ele- phants, to my city of Alassar” [Asshur]. BABY ELEPHANTS. ; “ie CHAPTER XIV. BABY ELEPHANTS. HE adult elephant attracts attention because of its great size and massive proportions; but the baby elephant is sure of the undisguised admiration of the young folk, for an exactly opposite reason; and perhaps no animal excites quite so much interest among all classes. At least two Asiatic elephants claim America as their birthplace. The first one was born in Philadelphia in 1880, where, with its mother, it attracted great attention, people going from far and near to visit it. The second baby ele- phant was born in Bridgeport in 1882, its mother being Mr. Barnum’s Asiatic elephant Hebe. ‘This infant proboscidian was named after the city of its birth, and has probably been watched, fed, and petted by hundreds of thousands of chil- dren in the United States. It is rare that elephants display any great affection for their young. Sir Emerson Tennent quotes Knox as saying that “the she’s are alike tender of any one’s young ones, as of their own.” Mr. Sanderson, in charge of the government elephants in India, contradicts this, and states that “much exclusiveness is shown by elephants in the detailed arrange- ments amongst themselves in a herd; and if the mothers and young ones be closely watched, it will be seen that the latter Lee THE IVORY KING. are very rarely allowed familiarities by other females, nor, indeed, do they seek them. I have seen,” he says, “many cases in the Kheddahs where young elephants, after losing their mothers by death or other causes, have been refused assistance by the other females, and have been buffetted as outcasts. I have only known one instance of a very gentle, motherly elephant, in captivity, allowing a motherless calf to nurse along with her young one.” The baby Bridgeport weighed at birth two hundred and forty-five pounds, and commenced nursing an hour and forty minutes later, —not with its trunk, as was supposed in the days of Buffon, but with its mouth, like all other mammals. The young elephants are nourished upon milk until they are six months old, when they eat a small quantity of tender grass; but for several months they depend principally upon milk. A single elephant is usually born at a time, though occasionally twins are seen among wild elephants. Some- times three small elephants are observed about the mother ; but they are generally of different ages, or are twins and a brother or sister two years and a half older. The new baby Bridgeport, when I first saw it, was one of the most interesting creatures possible to imagine. Its diminutive stature, just about the size of the adult pygmies, described in Chap. IV.; its short trunk and tail; its pinkish skin, and small, solemn eyes, made it the most grotesque and comical little fellow in the world. Like all young animals, it was quite playful, and its attempts at frisking about were very amusing. It would seize its mother’s tail or her trunk, or dart between her colossal legs in a veritable game of hide and seek, while she looked on with evident pride, displaying not the slightest alarm when the keeper lifted the baby in a (‘ONNOA GNV INVHda Ta AIVWaA DILVISY) “LYOdHOCIVA ALVA ANV AddH LW HE REAR ABKYAWAURSSE EERE 7 bs = oa gor b> age Sorensen = = c= = = SS: Se ay EEE a . 5 , Seam => tek ITT Why, 2 “—— é —— 14 aes SS ee os , Sa WS ami Pi rere eS : ‘ (races ns a = — PSS ok “=> ee AWN Ys x AN AL Nediado << OX 8 | SS \ IN \ \. Z ao oh —Ae A TAN A AYE \ \ \ \\\\ mits c AY SQ Ww tray : = iy ne” ie. BABY ELEPHANTS. 181 variety of positions so that Mr. James C. Beard could sketch it. This is a peculiarity that few mothers in the lower ani- mal kingdom have; and even the partly wild elephants seem to have perfect faith in man, trusting their young with them, and not resenting any familiarity that does not harm them. Among many animals, especially sea-lions, the mortality of the young, resulting from carelessness or clumsiness on the part of the parent, is very great; but it is very rarely, if ever, that a baby elephant is killed or injured. This is true in the great herds when they are stampeded by various ene- mies. When on the march, the mothers and young go in advance; but when the note of alarm is sounded, they imme- diately fall back, the tuskers, or males, going to the front; and an observer at this time would be astonished at the sud- den disappearance of the young. At the first alarm, they run to their mother, and place themselves beneath her, shuffling along in this way; yet so careful are these enormous parents, that even in travelling at a rapid rate, and crowded by one another, the babies are never harmed. ‘To this great care on the part of elephants is, undoubtedly, due the safety of men who handle these animals; the great brutes being instinc- tively careful of all smaller attendants. In wild Asiatic elephants, the greatest number of births are during September, October, and November. When a baby elephant is added to the herd, they remain about the mother for two or three days, to give the little one an opportunity to gain strength. The greatest care is given the youngsters by the mothers. They are assisted over rough places, pushed up hills, and are never an encumbrance to the movements of the body. 138° > THE IVORY KING. Perhaps the most amusing sight is witnessed when a herd with young have to swim deep streams. When the mothers are once off bottom, very little of their great bodies shows © above the surface ; and they often swim or walk with only the tip of the trunk showing. If the infant is very young, or there is danger of its taking cold, the old one takes it in her trunk, and holds it above the water as she swims: others are supported at the surface. Older babies scramble upon the mother’s back, and ride along with only the curious cushions of their feet in the water; while some sit astride the old one’s back, holding on with their legs. The baby elephant does not lack courage. Sir Emerson Tennent states that once when a herd of elephants was cap- tured, two tiny elephants were entrapped with them, — one about ten months old, whose head was covered with brown curly hair, and the other a little older. They both kept with the herd, trotting in and out between the legs of their elders, being caressed by all. According to the same writer, when the mother of the youngest was singled out by the noosers, and was dragged along, the little one followed, showing great indignation at the proceedings, and prevented them from putting a second noose over the mother; running in between her and the natives, trying to seize the rope, and pushing and striking them with its diminutive trunk, until it became so annoying that it had to be captured and carried away by main force. Even then it resisted, shrieking loudly, stopping to look back at every step; but finally it attached itself to a large female, and stood by her fore-legs, and moaned continually. After a while, however, it made its escape, and returned to its dam; and, when recovered, both babies shrieked lustily, struck at the men with their trunks, BABY ELEPHANTS. 183 and twisted their little bodies into many curious contor- tions. Perhaps the most laughable part of this scene was, that the babies would eagerly seize any article of food that was thrown them, and still keep on screaming all the while they were eating. 7 } These interesting infants were afterwards sent down to Colombo, to the house of Sir Emerson Tennent, and became ereat pets. “One,” he says, “attached himself especially to the coachman, who had a little shed erected for him near his own quarters at the stables. But his favorite resort was the kitchen, where he received a daily allowance of milk and plantains, and picked up several little delicacies besides. He was innocent and playful in the extreme; and, when walking in the grounds, he would trot up to me, twine his little trunk around my arm, and coax me to take him to the fruit-trees. In the evening the grass-cutters, now and then, indulged him by permitting him to carry home a load of fodder for the horses, on which occasions he assumed an air of great gravity that was highly amusing, showing that he was deeply impressed with the importance and responsi- bility of the service intrusted to him. Being sometimes per- mitted to enter the dining-room, and helped to fruit at dessert, he at last learned his way to the sideboard; and on more than one occasion, having stolen in during the absence of the servants, he made a clean sweep of the wineglasses and china, in his endeavors to reach a basket of oranges. For these and other pranks, we were at last obliged to put him away.” 184 } THE IVORY KING. CHAPTER XV. TRICK ELEPHANTS. HE readiness of the elephant to familiarize itself with various tricks has been recognized from very early times, and the list of accomplishments which these unwieldy creatures have acquired is a long and interesting one. To the circus of the present day, the elephant is invaluable. People tire of the old jokes of the clown, and of the time- worn bare-back riding, but the elephant possesses a peculiar fascination ; and, the more it is observed, the more there is to admire. ‘This was, I think, particularly true of Jumbo, who, though he had no tricks to display, was a never-failing source of interest. JI remember on one occasion, when afforded an opportunity of entering his stable alone, I stood for a long © time noting the monotonous, pendulum-like movement of the enormous head and trunk as it swayed from side to side ; and so huge did he appear, and withal so wonderful, such a giant of flesh and bone, that I could have extended my visit a long time without becoming wearied with its monotony. I think this is true to a great extent with all elephants. They are so wonderful and stupendous, that they do not wear upon the public patience. The education of the elephant is quite an important mat- ter; and in nearly all the large herds, like Barnum’s, there I ence cence, tetas ciate C—O RR A A _ y— ie TRICK ELEPHANTS. 185 are what might be called elephant schools, where the ele- phants are not only taught, but kept in practice. Kindness is a feature of this education ; but fearis the motive, after all, on the part of the elephant; and were it not for the dread which the hook of the trainer inspires, there would be little discipline maintained. The trainer of the Barnum herd informed me that he had often seen elephants, especially young ones, practising their lessons out of school. On one occasion he looked through a crevice into’the pen of the elephants who were fastened up for the night, and there was one trying to stand on its head. While he watched, it made the attempt several times, just as if he had been standing by, ‘and finally succeeded. Some of my young readers may possibly think that this is a remark- able evidence of intelligence, but I am inclined to think that it was merely the result of the force of daily habit. As long ago as the time of Pliny, elephants were observed studying their lessons, if so we may term it. This ancient author tells us that an elephant, having been punished for his inaptitude in executing some feat which he was required to learn, was observed at night endeavoring to practise what he had vainly attempted during the day; and Plutarch confirms this by mentioning an elephant who practised his theatrical attitudes, alone, by moonlight. The elephants of to-day are trained to march like soldiers, to wheel and counter-march at command, to salute their superior by throwing up the trunk and whistling loudly, to build pyramids and climb upon eminences; and one small elephant has been taught to walk upon a rope,—a very broad and flat one. Elephants upon the see-saw, upon a rolling ball, elephants upon their hind-legs, and dancing ele- 186 THE IVORY KING. phants,—all are familiar to the circus-goer; and to show to what perfection the art of animal-training has attained, quite recently two small Indian elephants, which were erroneously advertised as mammoths in New York, from the fact that they had some hair upon their heads and bodies, were edu- cated to do some comical tricks, one of which was to ride a tricycle, in which position they presented a most ludicrous appearance. (See Plate XVI.) Perhaps the most remarkable exhibition is that afforded by the little elephant, Tom Thumb, of the Barnum circus, the one who was in the accident which kiled Jumbo. This elephant comes walking upon his hind-legs upon a mimic stage, with an alleged German, and both take seats at a table; the elephant being dressed in hat, coat, and trousers. The clown elephant now takes a bell in its trunk, and rings it; a waiter coming in and taking the order, which is evi- dently for some intoxicant. When he returns with a bottle and two glasses, the elephant seizes the former while his companion is not looking, and drinks the contents. This act is repeated a number of times, the elephant ringing the bell and ordering another bottle before the German discovers the fraud. Then the elephant appears to be overcome with the wine, and, taking a fan in its trunk, uses it vigorously. In all its movements the curious animal acts exactly as if it understood all that was going on, and fully appreciated the sport. It is not often that an elephant is employed as a witness in court, but such an instance occurred in Cleveland some time ago. The famous trick elephant Pickaninny had been exhibited there; and, as some discussion had been raised as to its speed, a test was given, the trainer affirming that the TRICK ELEPHANTS. 187 elephant could travel three miles in thirty minutes. It accomplished a mile in eight minutes; and the officers of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals very prop- erly interfered, and arrested the driver, charging him with having prodded the animal with an iron until the blood came. The next day the parties appeared in court, and the trainer subpeened his elephant in his defence. As the animal could not squeeze up the stairs to the police court, the latter was held in the corridor below. When asked if he had been injured, Pickaninny moved his head negatively; and when the inquiry was made if he was treated well, he bobbed his head up and down, and grunted his assent in a very decided manner. It is unnecessary to say that his trainer was not far oft during this performance ; and as examination failed to show any wounds, the man was discharged, and the elephant complimented upon his success by being presented with loaves of bread, fruit, and other delicacies. The elephant has figured in the circus of England for at least two hundred and fifty years; and in 1681 a fine speci- men was accidentally destroyed by fire in Dublin. The exhibition price had been so high that comparatively few persons had seen it; and at the time of the fire, the poorer classes hunted for pieces of the flesh as relics, which shows what a novel spectacle an elephant must have been at this time. Among the first trained elephants exhibited in Europe, was a fine Asiatic animal, employed at the Adelphi Theatre, London. It took part in an Eastern play, and evoked much applause by marching in a procession, kneeling before the king, and saluting the true prince without apparent orders. 188 _ -‘THE IVORY KING. One of the first elephants seen in London was kept in the Tower of London in the seventeenth century, and was a gift to Henry III. from Louis IX. of France. It was probably obtained from Africa when the French king invaded that country. The order relating to this elephant is still extant among the old archives, and reads thus: “ We command you, that, of the farm of our city, ye cause, without delay, to be built at our Tower of London, one house of forty feet long, and twenty feet deep, for our elephant.” It was evidently quite the custom among monarchs to send elephants to one another. Emmanuel of Portugal sent a fine one to Pope Leo X.; and Cardan describes one that he saw in the sixteenth century, at the court of the Queen of Bohe- mia, the daughter of Charles the Fifth. As early as 802, Haroun-al-Raschid, caliph of the Saracens, sent one to Charlemagne. | The elephants of Germanicus were trained to perform many remarkable feats, as hurling javelins into the air with their trunks, and catching them. Pliny says that these ele- phants danced upon a rope, and their steps were so practised and certain, that four of them walked upon the rope, bearing a litter, which contained one of their companions who feigned to be sick. This would seem an exaggeration, but an ele- phant upon the tight-rope has been seen in this country ; and ancient writers agree with Pliny that the elephants exhibited at ancient Rome could not only walk upon the rope, but retreat backwards without falling off. This performance, wonderful as it appears,.is credited by nearly all the old writers. Seneca describes an elephant, who, at the command of its keeper, would bow its head, kneel, and walk upon a rope. Of course, it is impossible for an elephant to walk ees nee cress:stne> serie a OEE EEE ee CC —— —— —— — ral; a : * ~~ wet TRICK ELEPHANTS. 189 upon a slack rope; and those alluded to were probably of very large size, perhaps flat upon the sides, and stretched to the greatest tension, and placed near the ground. It is evident, however, that, in some cases, the rope was high above the spectators; as one writer mentions an ele- phant exhibited in the presence of the Emperor Galba, which ascended to the roof of the circus, on a rope stretched in an incline, and came back in safety, bearing a man upon its back. This performance is extremely wonderful when we remem- ber the natural timidity of the animal, and the almost im- _ possibility of forcing it upon a structure that is in the least unstable or frail. When elephants are marched over a bridge, they exercise the greatest caution, often trying the boards before taking the step, and displaying much sagacity. We have seen the elephant of to-day fire a gun, play upon the hand-organ, or ring a bell: and Arrian mentions seeing an elephant who played upon the cymbals, having one attached to each knee, and bearing the third in its proboscis ; thus beating a measure with great exactness, while other elephants danced about him. Busbec, ambassador from Ger- many to Constantinople in 1555, saw an elephant which he describes as an extremely graceful dancer and ball-player, throwing the ball, and catching it, as easily as could a man with his hands. It isa common thing for parrots to be taught to scream out the name of prominent people, and elephants have been trained to perform a somewhat similar trick. Thus, an ele- phant saluted Domitian when he passed; and when the ele- phant presented by Emmanuel of Portugal saw Leo X., to 190 THE IVORY KING. whom he was sent as a gift, it fell upon its knees, and made a profound obeisance. By far the best-trained elephant which was ever exhibited in London, was owned by the Duke of Devonshire, who ob- tained the animal in a curious manner. On being asked by a lady en route for India, what she should bring him, he re- plied jokingly, “ Ah! nothing less than an elephant.” A few months later, he was astonished at receiving the animal, whose actions and intelligence were the admiration of the country. | The elephant was kept in a large enclosure, and treated with every kindness and. attention, and developed a remark- able intelligence, soon learning to assist In many ways the man who was employed to take care of it. At his request it would go to him, take a broom, and sweep the paths or grass wherever he indicated, using her trunk to perform the work, with as much ease as a man would his hands. When he was watering the garden, it would follow him around, carrying the water-pot; always being rewarded for its faith- ful services with a carrot, or some other vegetable. The keeper soon found that the elephant was adroit at work of any kind. When given a bottle, it uncorked it itself, by pressing it against the ground with its foot, and holding it at an angle of forty-five degrees, carefully pulling the cork out with its trunk. When this feat was often tried for the en- tertainment of the duke’s friends, a soda-water bottle was used, in which the cork projected a very little above the edge. When the bottle was uncorked, she would turn her trunk around, so as to reverse it, and drink the contents with much gusto, then handing the bottle to the attendant. Another trick it performed was equally applauded. ‘This TRICK ELEPHANTS. 191 was to take off its blanket without the aid of its trunk. When the attendant rode it, he covered its back with a large cloth; and, when he wished to dismount, it would kneel, then rise, and, at the word of command, begin to agitate the muscles of its loins in such a manner that the housing was soon wrigegled off, upon which it would take and fold it with exactness, and then toss it upon the centre of its back. Such an animal naturally became a great favorite, and, at the time, was as famous as Jumbo. It displayed great affec- tion for its keeper; and it is needless to say, that it was re- turned. The first keeper attended it for eight years; and, when he left, it seemed to mourn, and showed a disposition to resent the advances of the new attendant, but was gradu- ally won over by kindness, and finally would cry lustily for him if he remained away what it considered too long a time. This famous elephant died of consumption in 1829, in the prime of life, being about twenty-one years of age. 192 THE IVORY KING. CHAPTER XVI. ELEPHANTS AND THEIR FRIENDS. LL animals have their favorites or friends, —it may be some attendant or some animal to which they have formed an attachment, — and the elephant is no exception to the rule. Most of the latter’s friends are made in confine- ment; but the wild animal has a number of little companions, which are of great value, at least, in adding to its comfort. These are birds; and chief among them is a beautiful crane, which is often seen — and, indeed, numbers of them — perched upon the back of the great animal, and riding about, present- ing a strange and decided contrast to the dark-skinned pro- boscidian. The presence of these shy birds moving about on so curious a roost would seem a mystery; but, should we watch them, we should see that they were performing a most friendly act. They walk over the great, wrinkled back, and with their sharp eyes spy out all the insects which infest the great pachyderm, picking them out, and so securing a dinner and serving their friend at the same time, who probably is often driven to desperation by the myriads of insect-torments which abound in the dark continent. Besides the cranes, there are several smaller birds which are equally friendly to the king of beasts, and often congregate upon its back in great numbers; running about without fear, clinging to the ELEPHANTS AND THEIR FRIENDS. 193 huge ears, now dangling by the tail, and performing a still more friendly act at times in warning their friend of danger by rising in a flock, and uttering shrill cries, which arouse the drowsy elephant to a sense of its danger. In cenfinement particularly, the elephant is famous for its friendships, attaching itself to certain persons or animals, showing its affection for them in various ways. One of the Barnum elephants formed a strong friendship for a large dog, which was fully reciprocated ; the dog sleeping with its great friend, and always remaining about its feet. If it strayed away at any time, the elephant would look after it, and on its return show its delight and pleasure in many ways. Elephants often become attached to children, and seem to display the greatest solicitude for them. They have been employed as nurses to extremely small children, performing the duties as care-taker with perfect satisfaction. Though, as a rule, elephants obey their keepers from fear, there are cases where a decided friendship exists; and even when furious with rage, an elephant will often obey its keep- er’s voice. An affecting instance of this was seen in the case of the famous elephant Chuni, who was believed to have gone mad. The animal was taken out to be shot; and its keeper was obliged to order it to kneel, that the soldiers might shoot it. The man reluctantly gave the order; and the elephant obeyed the command, and fell, pierced by many bullets. A mad elephant in Germany, which had destroyed much property, yielded immediately to the voice of the man who owned it, or had been its friend and keeper. The works of the ancient writers abound in instances of attachment and friendship between the huge animals and human beings. fElian relates a story of an elephant who became passionately 194 THE IVORY KING. attached to a little girl who sold flowers in the streets of Antioch, and had occasionally given it a part of her store. Atheneus tells of one which became so fond of a little child, that it would eat only in its presence; but I fear that this story will not stand the test. Strabo states that ele- phants were known to have pined away and died when de- prived of their keepers to whom they were attached. Lieut. Shipp gives, in his memoirs, a very minute account of an ele- phant, who, upon killing its keeper, was seized with what was considered a fit of remorse, which ultimately killed the animal. In other words, it died of *“‘a broken heart,” a term that is applied to-day to elephants in India who die of no apparent cause. In Purchas’s collection of travels, there is an account of an elephant who mourned for its master, the King of Ava, who was slain in battle, for many days; and, as the same is known to have occurred among dogs and cats at the present day, it is not at all improbable. That the elephant should become attached to its keeper, is not strange. It is perfectly familiar with all his movements, receives all its food from hin, is caressed and petted; and it is not surprising that at times the animals rebel when pro- vided with an utter stranger to replace the one in whom they have learned to trust. bay tor tale, ; TUSKERS AT WORK. 195 CHAPTER XVII. TUSKERS AT WORK. E; have seen how the elephant is trapped, glanced at it in confinement, and now come to the question of its actual value; in other words, how it is utilized by man. The simplest answer to this would be, that the elephant is a patient and faithful servant, quick to oblige, and, though not the most valuable of all animals as a helpmate to man, it cer- tainly stands first in this respect in India. In the chapter on elephant intelligence, the traits of the great animal are dwelt upon; and it is its quickness to obey orders, the celerity with which it seems to understand them, its great strength and docility, which make it so valuable. There is hardly any service in India, requiring heavy work, in which the elephant is not employed. All the native nobles keep large herds of them, and in early times the numbers employed for simple purposes of show were remarkable. The tuskers are valued the most; as with their stout tusks they lift lumber, and do much heavy labor, the trunk being used less than is generally supposed. In lifting a heavy bur- den by a rope, the male elephant does not haul by its trunk, but places it over one tusk, and takes the end with its teeth, and thus has a purchase that the female, who relies upon her teeth alone, does not possess. Long tusks are not necessary : oe THE IVORY KING. in fact, in confinement they are cut once a year at least, to prevent the animals from injuring themselves. This opera- tion is performed by making the animal lie down in the water, and sawing the tusk off; the rule being, according to Sanderson, to measure from the eyes to the insertion of the tusk in the lip; this length measured from the latter point along the tusk, will give the spot where it should be cut. In young animals, a little more should be allowed; as the above measurement may approach to nearly the medullary pulp of the tusk. | Before the introduction of the railway in India, the ele- phant was used entirely to transport troops. Both male and female are now employed as laborers. In hunting, the tusk- ers are chiefly selected, on account of their superior courage ; and in following the tiger in India, they are almost invariably of great value, especially in Bengal, where the places fre- quented by this animal are often covered by high grass. In these hunts, only elephants whose courage has been tested are used, the hunters riding in the howdah upon their backs. There is danger, however, in having an elephant which is too courageous. Such a one will, if not under perfect con- trol, become enraged at the very sight of a tiger, and charge it, often with lamentable results to the hunters in the how- dah, who are liable to be shaken out, and crushed to death. In 1876, at Dacca, an elephant acted in this way. A gentle- man had taken his courageous wife on a tiger-hunt, both being in the howdah on a female elephant. Suddenly a large tigress ran across an open place; and the elephant, despite the commands of the mahout, charged immediately, under the influence of terror and excitement, or rage. The hunter fired, and rolled the tigress over in front of the elephant, who TUSKERS AT WORK. 197 began to kick at the prostrate brute, who, in turn, grasped the hind-leg of the elephant, and scratched, bit, and pulled with such vehemence that the elephant was fairly pulled over upon it, fortunately killing the tigress instantly. When the elephant went down, the sportsman was thrown violently out, his rifle flying in another direction, and going off, fortunately without damage to any one. His wife man- aged to retain her place, and was safely helped out by her husband, both running to another elephant, and so escaping without harm. This calls to mind the method of an English major, also a reputed famous hunter of former days. It is said that he had killed twelve hundred elephants in his time. He made a wager that he could kill two of these animals at one shot, and won, by shooting a female so that it fell upon its calf and killed it. | The elephant, as we have seen, is very solicitous of its trunk, and, when attacked by a tiger, holds it high in air; and if by any accident this member is injured, the mahout some- times loses command. Mr. Williamson thus describes such an occurrence which happened to two officers of the Bengal army :— “They had been in the habit of killing tigers with only one elephant, on which being mounted, they one day roused a tiger of a very fierce disposition. The animal, after doing some mischief among the dogs, which baited him very cour- ageously, at length darted at the elephant’s head, and, though foiled in the attempt to get upon it, nevertheless scratched her trunk severely. No sooner did she feel the tiger’s claws penetrating her proboscis, than she turned round, and set off at full speed, roaring most vehemently. She seemed to have 198 THE IVORY KING. lost her senses, and to be bent on mischief; for whenever she saw a living object, she pursued it, totally heedless of the mahout’s endeavors to guide or restrain her. She was at length, by fatigue and management, brought into a govern- able state; but she was spoiled for tiger-hunting.” The same author chronicles a narrow coen em for both ele- phant and riders from a tiger: — “The tiger had satiated himself upon a bullock he had killed, and lay lurking in the grass, — which was as high as the backs of the elephants, and very thick, —not far from the remains of the bullock. He was extremely cunning, and crouched so close as to render it, for a long time, doubtful whether he was in the jungle, or not. The symptoms dis- played by the elephants, on approaching the place where he lay concealed, induced the party to persevere in their efforts to rouse him. One gentleman, particularly, urged his ma- hout to make his elephant beat the spot where the scent was strongest; which being done, in spite of the tremendous tones of the agitated animal, the tiger, finding himself com- pelled either to resist, or to submit to being trodden upon, sprang upon the elephant’s quarter, and so far succeeded as to fix his claws in the pad; his hind-legs were somewhat spread, and their claws were fixed into the fleshy membranes of the elephant’s thigh. Actuated by the excess of fear, oc- casioned by so sudden and so painful an attack, the elephant dashed through the cover at a surprising rate; the tiger hold- ing fast by its fore-paws, and supported by its hinder ones, unable, however, in consequence of the rapid and irregular motions of the elephant, either to raise himself any higher, or to quit the hold he had so firmly taken with his claws. The gentleman, who had much ado to keep his seat, was pre- TUSKERS AT WORK. #99 cluded from firing at his grim companion, as well from his unprecedented situation, as from the great danger of wound- ing some of the numerous followers, who were exerting the utmost speed of their respective elephants to come up to his assistance. ‘The constant desire felt by the elephant to get rid of his unwelcome rider, which produced a waving and irregular pace, gave the opportunity for those who were mounted on light and speedy animals to overtake the singu- lar fugitives. Another gentleman of the party, coming up close, was enabled to choose his position; when, taking a safe aim, he shot the tiger, which fell to the ground, and required no further operations.” An elephant has been known to fling a tiger twenty feet through the air, and well-trained animals will catch a leaping tiger upon its tusks. This, however, is rarely done, perhaps from lack of opportunity. Much preparation is required in training an elephant for tiger-hunting. A stuffed skin is generally thrown to them, and they are taught to kneel and crush it; and, when thoroughly familiar with the appearance of the big cat through the dummy, they are taken into the field. In India the elephant has often been used as a public executioner. Shah-Jehan terrified the Portuguese at Hoogly some years ago by announcing, that, if they did not renounce the Christian faith, he would throw them beneath his ele- phants’ feet. Knox, in his account of Ceylon, states that “the king makes use of them for executioners,” and that the animals would run their tusks through the bodies of the vic- tims at the word of command. These elephant executioners were provided with sharp iron spikes with a socket with three edges, which at such times were fitted upon their 200 THE IVORY KING. tusks. This custom was kept up until the British conquered the island. Bishop Heber says, “I preached, administered the sacra- ment, and confirmed twenty-six young people, in the audience- hall of the late King of Kandy, which now serves as a church. Here, twelve years ago, this man, who was a dreadful tyrant, and lost his throne in consequence of a large party of his subjects applying to Gen. Brownrigge for protection, used, as we were told, to sit in state to see those whom he had condemned trodden ra death and tortured by elephants trained for the purpose.” In very early times the elephant formed an equally i impor- tant factor in the hunt. Marco Polo has recorded the manner of the Grand Khan’s proceeding to the sport : — “On account of the narrowness of the passes in some parts of the country where his Majesty follows the chase, he is borne upon two elephants only, or sometimes a single one, being more convenient than a greater number. But, under other circumstances, he makes use of four, upon the backs of which is placed a pavilion of wood, handsomely carved, the inside being lined with cloth of gold, and the outside covered with the skins of lions,—a mode of conveyance which is rendered necessary to him during his hunting excur- sions, in consequence of the gout, with which his Majesty is troubled. In the pavilion he always carries with him twelve of his best gerfalcons, with twelve officers, from amongst his favorites, to bear him company and amuse him. Those who are on horseback by his side give him notice of the approach of cranes, or other birds, upon which he raises the curtain of the pavilion, and, when he espies the game, gives direction for letting fly the gerfalcons, which seize the cranes, and ——-—— —_ —— "a. ~ omit s ’ — - oe ee ee oN \\ \ : \ \ , \ \\ \\\ \\ \ \ =\\ cea WU) “SOOT DONIAUUVO LNVHda Ta \ a alte ~=— —<- — = Bae wok atee “7 18 he Sep wae aT RPI Bea Pee Ww t+ ’ Alay ir ben the rly eres TUSKERS AT WORK. 201 overpower them after a long struggle. The view of this sport, as he lies upon his couch, affords extreme satisfaction to his Majesty.” The Nawaub of Oude, Vizier Ally, or Asophul-Doulah, who was elevated to the throne through the British, was even more prodigal than the Grand Khan: — “He generally took the field in the month of March, accompanied by ten thousand cavalry and as many infantry, _ and from seven to eight hundred elephants. From forty to sixty thousand people followed the camp, with grain and merchandise. When the vizier set out from his palace at Lucknow, a line was formed with the prince in the centre, mounted on an elephant, with two attendant elephants, — eo”? carrying his state howdah, the other his sporting howdah. A line of elephants was prolonged on each side the prince, and was flanked at each extremity by the cavalry. The immense cavalcade proceeded straight through the country, regardless of the mischief that was a necessary consequence ; the poor cultivators running after the vizier, crying aloud for mercy. When any game was started, a continual fire was kept up along the line; and, if a herd of antelopes was discovered, the elephants halted, and the cavalry hemmed them in, that his Highness and his courtiers might leisurely destroy them. Proceeding in this manner by day, and _halt- ing in the evening at appointed stations, where every luxury was prepared in sumptuous tents, the army at length ap- proached the Thibet Mountains, where tigers, panthers, leopards, and buffaloes were to be found. An encampment being formed, their sporting was continued for several weeks upon a grand and formidable scale ; and, mounted upon their elephants, the prince and his nobles scoured the country in 202 THE IVORY KING. pursuit of the ferocious beasts that destroyed the flocks and herds of the peasantry. The array of despotism was here of some service, for the numbers of carnivorous animals that were killed was generally in proportion to the magnitude of the force employed against them.” The curious uses to which elephants have been put are endless. An English officer, who served in India, says, “1 have myself seen the wife of a mahout [for the followers often take their families with them to camp] give a baby in charge of an elephant while she went on some business, and have been highly amused in observing the sagacity and care of the unwieldy nurse. The child, which, like most chil- dren, did not like to lie still in one position, would, as soon as left to itself, begin crawling about, in which exercise it would probably get among the legs of the animal, or entan- gled in the branches of the trees on which he was feeding ; when the elephant would, in the most tender manner, dis- engage his charge, either by lifting it out of the way with his trunk, or by removing the impediments to its free progress. If the child had crawled to such a distance as to verge upon the limits of his range [for the animal was chained by the leg to a peg driven into the ground], he would stretch out his trunk, and lift it back as gently as possible to the spot whence it had started.” M. D’Obsonville observed two elephants engaged in break- ing down a wall at the command of the mahouts, who stood by, imploring, ordering, and coaxing by turns. The trunks of these animals were protected by leather shields. At Barrackpoor, there was an elephant in the early part of this century, noted for its intelligence in working without a mahout. Once loaded with parcels, it would enter the TUSKERS AT WORK. 203 Ganges, swim across, and then unload itself. Another ele- phant, who was kept near the fort at Trarancore, was em- ployed to carry out the treasure-boxes of the rajah of Trarancore. It was totally unattended, and marched. sol- emnly into the court-yard of the fort, bearing a box, repeating this until all the boxes were piled up in regular order. It was reported in the press soon after Lord Dufferin had been appointed viceroy to India, that he had been presented with an elephant paper-cutter, which if true, —and it is not by any means improbable, — would be one of the singular uses to which an elephant was ever put, and perhaps the most expensive. As the story goes, the tusks of a fine young elephant were beautifully carved into the shape of the huge paper-cutters now so fashionable; and the animal itself was taught to take an uncut pamphlet or book in its trunk, and cut the leaves. The greatest practical value of the elephant is seen in their work as laborers; and in hauling lumber they are especially of great service, their great strength enabling them to haul logs from localities that are ordinarily inacces- sible. At Moulmien these huge laborers can often be seen at work in the lumber-yards, and observers say that their power is most advantageously employed where great exertion is required for a short distance in a limited space of time. In the above-mentioned yards they may be seen carrying huge timbers, sometimes two or three animals engaged at one, exercising the greatest care and exactitude in the work, and obeying the slightest sign of the mahout. In lifting a heavy burden, the plank is edged or helped on to the tusks with the trunk, which is then wound around to steady it, while all the strain comes upon the tusks. (See Plate XIII.) 204 THE IVORY KING. In hauling, a regular harness is employed, which consists of a leather collar that goes about the neck; or sometimes a girth, a stout rope ninety feet in length that fits behind the shoulders. ‘To either of these the dragging-rope is attached; and if it is strong, and the elephant has not been frightened by frequent breakings, occasioned by the carelessness of drivers, it will make the most extraordinary endeavors and exertions to draw heavy loads, often bending forward so that its forehead almost touches the ground. When light timber is to be hauled, a rope is fash to the end of the log, and taken by the elephant between its teeth, and dragged along, the end elevated from the ground. Elephants are also harnessed to wagons just as horses. Travellers through Bridgeport some years ago were enter- tained by seeing one of Mr. Barnuim’s elephants harnessed to a plough, but it is very likely that the broad feet of the animal tramped down the earth about as fast as it was loosened up. At the elephant establishment at Dacca, two regular ele- phant carts are used, to which are harnessed these animals, and employed in removing the refuse about the stables. While the elephant can carry a very heavy burden, it is exceedingly susceptible to gall; almost every elephant in use, where great care is not taken, having a sore back. The natives, not especially humane, are apt to purposely neglect the animal, and allow its back to become sore; as, if the elephant cannot be used, they are relieved from duty. Sharp elephant owners prevent this by putting the attendants on half pay for as many weeks or months as it takes the poor creatures to recover. Elephants can be used in countries where a carriage would be impossible, and can carry a greater ia ae TUSKERS AT WORK. 205 load than can be packed on a large wagon; hence they are highly valued in a rocky and rough country. In such a place, a different gear is used from that already described. It consists of a thick, soft-padded cloth that covers the entire back, hanging down half way to the ground. Upon this the saddle fits, consisting of two large pads or sacks, each about two and a half feet broad, and six feet in length, and filled with a mass of dried grass or cocoanut fibre, so that they are about a foot thick. They are connected by cross-pieces, so that they fit one each side of the animals’ backbone, the skin of which is thus protected from galling. Upon these pads another large one is placed, and upon this the load is packed; so that the weight rests upon the ribs on each side of the vertebre, as the weight of a rider on horseback. The weight that can be loaded on an elephant depends upon the size of the animal. An ordinary elephant can carry half a ton continuously on a level country, but in a hilly district seven hundred-weight isa good load. Female elephants have been known to carry a pile of rice-bags, weighing twenty- four hundred pounds, for a short distance; but the regula- tion amount allowed by the Bengal commissariat is sixteen hundred and forty pounds, exclusive of attendants, harness, chains, etc., which is estimated at three hundred pounds extra. The magnificent howdahs, or saddles, used by some of the rajahs are extremely heavy. Thus, one of the silver state howdahs and trappings of his excellency the viceroy weighs a little over half a ton; or, to be more exact, — CWT. LBS. Howdah . , : . ’ ’ Lh alPbtede tp acieee Gold cloth . : : : : ; Nets aoa «| Punkahs, etc. : : : : : p A Rok | oc a Bay Ropes and gear eee apes Te 206 THE IVORY KING: Elephants are often used, as we use saddle-horses, as steeds by European officers in India; and a light, well-broken ele- phant has an easy motion quite agreeable. The Meerga caste, or breed, from their long lmbs, are generally the fast- est; while small calves are often employed, the rider sitting astride as in horseback-riding. A large saddle and stirrup is used; and in rough country, the little fellows are a welcome addition to the travellers’ party. Elephants are very sure-footed at their work, and, when going at full speed, rarely stumble; if they do, they only go upon the knees. Like horses, they will run away at times; and a bolting elephant is much more to be dreaded than a bucking horse. The Mysore officer in charge of elephants says, “I have felt, on the one or two occasions which I have been on a bolting elephant, as a man might feel if bestriding a runaway locomotive, and hooking the funnel with the crook of his walking-stick to hold it in. It is a very difficult thing,” he says, **to cure a confirmed bolter, as the habit has its origin in fear; and the animal is always liable to be startled by unexpected sounds or sights, chiefly the former. It is a rare trick, however; and I have only known two elephants subject to it. One was a fine baggage animal, but almost useless for jungle-work from this trick. I, however, cured him in the following way: I had a stout hoop of iron made with sharp spikes on the inside, to encircle one of his hind-legs. This was kept in its place round the leg by being suspended from the pad by a rope; and it fitted the leg loosely, so as not to inconvenience the elephant except when required to do so. To the ring was attached a chain fifteen feet long, at the other end of which was a pickaxe’s head. This grappling ile ae ee TUSKERS AT WORK. 207 apparatus was slung to the pad by a small cord in a slip-knot, handy to the mahout. If the elephant began to run, one pull freed it; and before the anchor had been dragged many yards, it caught in the roots or bushes, and brought the ele- phant up with such a twinge, that it soon began to think twice before making off.” The howdah is an ornamental covered saddle; though some resemble small houses, and cost their owners vast sums of money. They are used on state occasions, and in tiger-hunting. ‘The motion is hard, and rather unpleasant to the novice. Another saddle is called a charj4ém4 It is merely a broad board with cushions upon it, and footboards attached to each side. There is a rail upon each end; and four persons sit upon it, two on each side, back to back, somewhat after the fashion of a jaunting car. Riding-elephants will travel at about four miles an hour, while some long-legged fellows will make five or more miles in this time. Wounded elephants, as we have seen, some- times make remarkable time. Concerning the motion of elephants, Bishop Heber says, — “ At Barrackpoor, for the first time I mounted an elephant, the motion of which I thought far from disagreeable, though very different from that of a horse. 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