LUCKIEST OF ELEPHANTS.

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 48, 20 July 1908, Page 8

LUCKIEST OF ELEPHANTS.

{THOSE THAT SHARE THE GLORY OF INDIAN PRINCES.

The elephant in India must work when caught. That does not necessarily mean an unpleasant time for him. He may haul cannon over Himalayan passes or he may take part in tiger hunts in the jungle. He may haul logs in the teak forests of Burma, or, best of all, he may. be dressed in glad rags and share the glory and sports of some native prince. Whatever they do all the elephants come from the same source—the jungles of Central and Southern India, where thousands of them roam wild under protection of the Government. Periodically, when a shortage of elephants is felt, the forest service department organises a round-up of wild elephants. For weeks shikaris, or huntsmen, gq scouting through the forest to discover where elephants are most plentiful. Here is built a stockade of rough-hewn tree trunks, buttressed on the outside with walls of earth. Its entrance, which is narrow, has a kind of funnel built away from it, also of tree trunks.

The round-up itself is often done at night. You can imagine no more weird spectacle than the Indian forest lit up by the torches of the hunters, who, shouting and yelling, drive the screaming and trumpeting elephants into the stockade through the funnel. Very often there are a thousand elephants in the bunch, and perhaps four pr fiv<f times that number of beaters and shikaris. The elephants are left alone in the stockade for a day or so until they calm down a bit from their excitement and terror. Then green food by the ton is thrown in for the elephants, and gradually a few expert .trainers mounted on tame tuskers venture in to make friends with the captives. One by one the wild elephants are roped to two tame colleagues and then taken out. Should the wild elephant show fight he is promptly rebuked by his guardians in a way that admits of no further dispute. They take him fqr walks, lead him down to the river to drink and bathe, and gradually he reconciles himself to his fate.

If he is a very wild fellow he is eagerly bought up by one of the ruling Maharajahs of India as a fighting elephant. For in the native States not wholly belonging to Great Britain fierce combats between elephants are given by the princes as entertainments in honour of distinguished guests ; also fights between tigers and elephants. At an elephant fight, which is rarely to the death, two mahouts or drivers sit upon the heads of the monsters, whq ‘approach each other until separated by only a low stone wall. They then begin wrestling with head and trunk and feinting this way and that to get a chance to make a furious thrust with the tusks.

In the elephant and tiger fights the latter comes off second best. He springs, of course, and as he does so the elephant curls up his tender trunk and permits himself to be mauled by his adversary, while his keen eye is watching for an opportunity to kneel and crush the life out of the tiger with his five tons of weight.

The largest of all the elephants and the most intelligent are chosen by the Government and the native princes for the State studs. Elephants of State have a very easy life of it. They dq little or no work and only come forth on State occasions bearing lofty towers of silver or gilded wood, from which depend superb , brocades and great draperies cf cloth of gold blazing with precious stones.

In many cases, too, the ends of the animals’ tusks are fitted with great bosses qf pure gold, and his massive forehead is armoured with golden plates stuck full of steel spikes.

Aloft in the silver tower will sit a prince such as the Nizam of Hyderabad. whose family pedigree may be traced back for five thousand years. Before him on either side of the elephant walk great nobles proclaiming his might and majesty, while behind come picturesque cavalry and spearmen, more ornamental than useful. And last of all may come batteries of gold and silver cannons drawn by teams of elephants, six or eight to each battery.—“ New York Times.”