Jogging round the world

Here is another elephant dressed in elaborate trappings. His saddle cloth is very gorgeously embroidered and fringed, and he has a cloth over his head, which seems to cover up his eyes, but perhaps he can see through the fringe. He even has a bracelet or anklet around one of his fore feet—do you see it? The owner of all this magnificence sits on the elephant’s back in a howdah, a very much ornamented sort of chair.

With all its splendour, I am sure we should not find this a comfortable way of travelling, for as the elephant lumbers along, the howdah pitches first in one direction, then in another. We should feel as though we were at sea; and in the hot sun, without the bracing air we get on the water, it might be an unpleasant motion.

This elephant comes from Khaipur, a state in the western part of India. It is a very hot part of the country, and we should probably not be able to live there more than four months in the year, as the rest of the time it is intensely hot. Many of the Hindu people of Khaipur own large numbers of oxen, camels, sheep and goats; so they do not settle in one place to live, but go about, stopping wherever they find good pasture-lands. The chief man is called the mir; isn’t that a strange name? He has a very large estate, with big parks, and, I suppose, owns several elephants.