ILLUMINATED ELEPHANTS

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 200, 24 August 1929, Page 7 (Supplement)

ILLUMINATED ELEPHANTS

It is impossible at this time to find the origin of the legend told to French childre°i in the kindergarten, which says that the Island of Ceylon is the site of the Garden or Eden of old, that terrestrial paradise from which our ancestors, Adam and Eve, were chased away in ignominy. Perhaps it's the exotic flora of the isle and -the abundance of luxuriously plumed birds that's at the. root of the matter. Whatever the reason, things are not quite paradisical in Ceylon at the present time. On the contrary, the Ceyloness are having an internal quarrel among themselves. The trouble concerns the elephants. Elephants are used on road work and in agriculture in Ceylon. Just like the first man after Paradise, the mastodons must gain their dailv bread by the sweat of their brow. At nights these elephants roam 'about crazing, etc. Motorists bump into them on the roads, and, usually, the motor cars are the worst sufferers in the nocturnal collisions. The motorists demand that the elephants shall henceforth carry a light, white in front, red in the rear, one imagines. The elephant owners think the demand ridiculous, and intend to fight it. Incidentally, serious doubt has been cast on Ceylon as the original Garden of Eden by a French voyageur. who discovered that the country does not grow apples.