129 In some of the elephant hunts conducted in the southern provinces of Ceylon by the earlier British Governors, as many as 170 and 200 elephants were secured in a single corral, of which a portion only were taken out for the public service, and the rest shot, the motive being to rid the neighbourhood of them, and thus protect the crops from destruction. On the occasion here described, the object being to secure only as many as were required for the Government stud, it was not sought to entrap more than could conveniently be attended to and trained after capture.
130 This elephant is since dead; she grew infirm and diseased, and died at Colombo in 1848. Her skeleton is now in the Museum of the Natural History Society at Belfast.
131 The fact of the elephant exhibiting timidity, on having a long rod pointed towards him, was known to the Romans; and Pliny, quoting from the annals of Piso, relates, that in order to inculcate contempt for want of courage in the elephant, they were introduced into the circus during the triumph of Metellus, after the conquest of the Carthaginians in Sicily, and driven round the area by workmen holding blunted spears,—“Ab operariis hastas præpilatas habentibus, per circum totum actos.” (Nat. Hist. lib. viii. c. 6.)
132 “In a corral, to be on a tame elephant, seems to insure perfect immunity from the attacks of the wild ones. I once saw the old chief Mollegodde ride in amongst a herd of wild elephants, on a small elephant; so small that the Adigar’s head was on a level with the back of the wild animals: I felt very nervous, but he rode right in among them, and received not the slightest molestation.”—Letter from Major Skinner.
133 The surprising faculty of vultures for discovering carrion, has been a subject of much speculation, as to whether it be dependent on their power of sight or of scent. It is not, however, more mysterious than the unerring certainty and rapidity with which some of the minor animals, and more especially insects, in warm climates congregate around the offal on which they feed. Circumstanced as they are, they must be guided towards their object mainly if not exclusively by the sense of smell; but that which excites astonishment is the small degree of odour which seems to suffice for the purpose; the subtlety and rapidity with which it traverses and impregnates the air; and the keen and quick perception with which it is taken up by the organs of those creatures. The instance of the scavenger beetles has been already alluded to; the promptitude with which they discern the existence of matter suited to their purposes, and the speed with which they hurry to it from all directions; often from distances as extraordinary, proportionably, as those traversed by the eye of the vulture. In the instance of the dying elephant referred to above, life was barely extinct when the flies, of which not one was visible but a moment before, arrived in clouds and blackened the body by their multitude; scarcely an instant was allowed to elapse for the commencement of decomposition; no odour of putrefaction could be discerned by us who stood close by; yet some peculiar smell of mortality, simultaneously with parting breath, must have summoned them to the feast. Ants exhibit an instinct equally surprising. I have sometimes covered up a particle of refined sugar with paper on the centre of a polished table; and counted the number of minutes which would elapse before it was fastened on by the small black ants of Ceylon, and a line formed to lower it safely to the floor. Here was a substance which, to our apprehension at least, is altogether inodorous, and yet the quick sense of smell must have been the only conductor of the ants. It has been observed of those fishes which travel overland on the evaporation of the ponds in which they live, that they invariably march in the direction of the nearest water, and even when captured, and placed on the floor of a room, their efforts to escape are always made towards the same point. Is the sense of smell sufficient to account for this display of instinct in them? or is it aided by special organs in the case of the others? Dr. McGee, formerly of the Royal Navy, writing to me on the subject of the instant appearance of flies in the vicinity of dead bodies, says: “In warm climates they do not wait for death to invite them to the banquet. In Jamaica I have again and again seen them settle on a patient, and hardly to be driven away by the nurse, the patient himself saying, ‘Here are these flies coming to eat me ere I am dead.’ At times they have enabled the doctor, when otherwise he would have been in doubt as to his prognosis, to determine whether the strange apyretic interval occasionally present in the last stage of yellow fever was the fatal lull or the lull of recovery; and ‘What say the flies?’ has been the settling question. Among many, many cases during a long period I have seen but one recovery after the assembling of the flies. I consider the foregoing as a confirmation of smell being the guide even to the attendants, a cadaverous smell has been perceived to arise from the body of a patient twenty-four hours before death.”
134 This is precisely the action ascribed by Aristotle to the elephant, when levelling palm trees. De Anim. Hist. 1. ix. c. 2.
135 Armandi, Hist. Milit. des Eléphants, liv. i. ch. i. p. 2. It is an interesting fact, noticed by Armandi, that the elephants figured on the coins of Alexander and the Seleucidæ invariably exhibit the characteristics of the Indian type, whilst those on Roman medals can at once be pronounced African, from the peculiarities of the convex forehead and expansive ears.—Ibid. liv. i. cap. i. p. 3.
Armandi has, with infinite industry, collected from original sources a mass of curious information relative to the employment of elephants in ancient warfare, which he has published under the title of Histoire Militaire des Eléphants depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à l’introduction des armes à feu. Paris, 1843.
136 Ælian, lib. ii. cap. ii.
137 See Schlegel’s Essay on the Elephant and the Sphynx, Classical Journal, No. lx. Although the trained elephant nowhere appears upon the monuments of the Egyptians, the animal was not unknown to them, and ivory and elephants are figured on the walls of Thebes and Karnac amongst the spoils of Thothmes III. and the tribute paid to Rameses I. The Island of Elephantine, in the Nile, near Assouan (Syene) is styled in hieroglyphical writing “The Land of the Elephant;” but as it is a mere rock, it probably owes its designation to its form. See Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians, vol. i. pl. iv.; vol. v. p. 176. Above the first cataract of the Nile are two small islands, each bearing the name of Phylæ;—quære, is the derivation of this word at all connected with the Arabic term fil? See ante, p. 4, note. The elephant figured in the sculptures of Nineveh is universally as wild, not domesticated.
138 This is merely a reiteration of the statement of Ælian, who ascribes to the elephants of Taprobane a vast superiority in size, strength, and intelligence, above those of continental India: Καὶ ὁι δέ γε νησιῶται ἐλέφαντες τῶν ἠπειρωτῶν ἀλκιμωτεροί τε τὴν ῥώμην καὶ μείζους ἰδεῖν εἰσὶ, καὶ θυμοσοφώτεροι δὲ πάντα πάντη κρίνοιντο ἄν.—Ælian, De Nat. Anim. lib. xvi. cap. xviii.
Ælian also, in the same chapter, states the fact of the shipment of elephants in large boats from Ceylon to the opposite continent of India, for sale to the king of Kalinga; so that the export from Manaar, described in a former passage, has been going on apparently without interruption since the time of the Romans.
139 The expression of Tavernier is to the effect, that as compared with all others, the elephants of Ceylon are “plus courageux à la guerre.” The rest of the passage is a curiosity:—
“Il faut remarquer ici une chose qu’on aura peut-être de la peine à croire mais qui est toutefois très-véritable: c’est que lorsque quelque roi ou quelque seigneur a quelqu’un de ces éléphants de Ceylan, et qu’on en amène quelque autre des lieux où les marchands vont les prendre, comme d’Achen, de Siam, d’Arakan, de Pégu, du royaume de Boutan, d’Assam, des terres de Cochin et de la côte du Mélinde, dès que les éléphants en voient un de Ceylan, par un instinct de nature, ils lui font la révérence, portant le bout de leur trompe à la terre et la relevant. Il est vrai que les éléphants que les grands seigneurs entretiennent, quand on les amène devant eux, pour voir s’ils sont en bon point, font trois fois une espèce de révérence avec leur trompe, ce que j’ai vu souvent; mais ils sont stylés à cela, et leurs maîtres le leur enseignent de bonne heure.”—Les Six Voyages de J. B. Tavernier, lib. iii. ch. 20.
140 Ramayana, sec. vi.; Carey and Marshman, i. 105; Fauche, i. t. p. 66.
141 The only mention of the elephant in Sacred History is in the account given in Maccabees of the invasion of Egypt by Antiochus, who entered it 170 B.C., “with chariots and elephants, and horsemen, and a great navy.” (1 Macc. i. 17.) Frequent allusions to the use of elephants in war occur in both books: and in chap. vi. 34, it is stated that “to provoke the elephants to fight they show them the blood of grapes and of mulberries.” The term showed, ἔδειξαν, might be thought to imply that the animals were enraged by the sight of the wine and its colour, but in the Third Book of Maccabees, in the Greek Septuagint, various other passages show that wine, on such occasions, was administered to the elephants to render them furious. (Macc. v. 2, 10, 45.) Phile mentions the same fact, De Elephante, i. 145.
There is a very curious account of the mode in which the Arab conquerors of Scinde, in the 9th and 10th centuries, equipped the elephant for war; which being written with all the particularity of an eye-witness, bears the impress of truth and accuracy. Massoudi, who was born in Bagdad at the close of the 9th century, travelled in India in the year A.D. 913, and visited the Gulf of Cambay, the coast of Malabar, and the island of Ceylon:—from a larger account of his journeys he compiled a summary under the title of “Moroudj al-dzeheb” or the “Golden Meadows,” the MS. of which is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale. M. Reinaud, in describing this manuscript, says, on its authority, “The Prince of Mensura, whose dominions lay south of the Indus, maintained eighty elephants trained for war, each of which bore in his trunk a bent cymeter (carthel), with which he was taught to cut and thrust at all confronting him. The trunk itself was effectually protected by a coat of mail, and the rest of the body enveloped in a covering composed jointly of iron and horn. Other elephants were employed in drawing chariots, carrying baggage, and grinding forage, and the performance of all bespoke the utmost intelligence and docility.”—Reinaud, Mémoire sur l’Inde, antérieurement au milieu du XIe siècle, d’après les écrivains arabes, persans et chinois. Paris, M.D.CCC.XLIX. p. 215. See Sprenger’s English translation of Massoudi, vol. i. p. 383.
142 Broderip, Zoological Recreations, p. 226.
143 The iron goad with which the keeper directs the movements of the elephants, called a hendoo in Ceylon and hawkus in Bengal, appears to have retained the present shape from the remotest antiquity. It is figured in the medals of Caracalla in the identical form in which it is in use at the present day in India.
The Greeks called it ἅρπη, and the Romans cuspis.
144 Jordanus de Severac, in his Mirabilia Descripta, written about the year 1330, thus describes the mode then in use for taming captured elephants in Cambodia:—“And so the wild elephant remaineth caught between the two gates. Then cometh a man clothed in black or red, with his face covered, who cruelly thrashes him from above, and crieth out cruelly against him as against a ‘thief!’ and this goeth on for five or six days; without his getting anything to eat or drink. Then cometh another man with his face bare and clad in another colour, who feigneth to smite the first man, and to drive and thrust him away. Then he cometh to the elephant and talketh to him, and with a long spear he scratcheth him, and he kisses him and gives him food. And this goes on for ten or fifteen days, and so by degrees he ventureth down beside him and bindeth him to another elephant. And then after about twenty days he may be taken out to be taught and broken in.” (Chap. v.)
145 This was the largest elephant that had been tamed in Ceylon; he measured upwards of nine feet at the shoulders, and belonged to the caste so highly prized for the temples. He was gentle after his first capture, but his removal from the corral to the stables, though only a distance of six miles, was a matter of the extremest difficulty: his extraordinary strength rendering him more than a match for the attendant decoys. He on one occasion escaped, but was recaptured in the forest; and he afterwards became so docile as to perform a variety of tricks. He was at length ordered to be removed to Colombo; but such was his terror on approaching the fort, that on coaxing him to enter the gate, he became paralysed in the extraordinary way elsewhere alluded to, and died on the spot.
146 The natives of Ceylon profess that the high-caste elephants, such as are allotted to the temples, are of all others the most difficult to tame, and M. Bles, the Dutch correspondent of Buffon, mentions a caste of elephants which he had heard of, as being peculiar to the Kandyan kingdom, that were not higher than a heifer (génisse), covered with hair, and insusceptible of being tamed. (Buffon, Supp. vol. vi. p. 29.) Bishop Heber, in the account of his journey from Bareilly towards the Himalayas, describes the Raja Gourman Sing, “mounted on a little female elephant, hardly bigger than a Durham ox, and almost as shaggy as a poodle.” (Journ. ch. xvii.) It will be remembered that the mammoth discovered in 1803 embedded in icy soil in Siberia, was covered with a coat of long hair, with a sort of wool at the roots. Hence there arose the question whether that northern region had been formerly inhabited by a race of elephants, so fortified by nature against cold; or whether the individual discovered had been borne thither by currents from some more temperate latitudes. To the latter theory the presence of hair seemed a fatal objection; but so far as my own observation goes, I believe the elephants are more or less provided with hair. In some it is more developed than in others, and it is particularly observable in the young, which when captured are frequently covered with a woolly fleece, especially about the head and shoulders. In the older individuals in Ceylon, this is less apparent; and in captivity the hair appears to be altogether removed by the custom of the mahouts to rub their skin daily with oil and a rough lump of burned clay. See a paper on the subject, Asiat. Journ. N. S. vol. xiv. p. 182, by Mr. G. Fairholme. Fossil remains of elephants of extremely small dimensions have, it is said, been discovered in the island of Malta.
148 Captain Yule, in his Narrative of an Embassy to Ava in 1855, records an illustration of this tendency of the elephant to sudden death; one newly captured, the process of taming which was exhibited to the British Envoy, “made vigorous resistance to the placing of a collar on its neck, and the people were proceeding to tighten it, when the elephant, which had lain down as if quite exhausted, reared suddenly on the hind quarters, and fell on its side—dead!” (P. 104.)
Mr. Strachan noticed the same liability of the elephants to sudden death from very slight causes; “if they fall,” he says, “at any time, though on plain ground, they either die immediately, or languish till they die; their great weight occasioning them so much hurt by the fall.” (Phil. Trans. A. D. 1701, vol. xxiii. p. 1052.)
149 A correspondent informs me that on the Malabar coast of India, the elephant, when employed in dragging stones, moves them by means of a rope, which he either draws with his forehead, or manages by seizing it in his teeth.
150 “Here the trees were large and handsome, but not strong enough to resist the inconceivable strength of the mighty monarch of these forests; almost every tree had half its branches broken short by them, and at every hundred yards I came upon entire trees, and these, the largest in the forest, uprooted clean out of the ground, and broken short across their stems.” (A Hunter’s Life in South Africa. By R. Gordon Cumming, vol.ii. p.305.) “Spreading out from one another, they smash and destroy all the finest trees in the forest which happen to be in their course.... I have rode through forests where the trees thus broken lay so thick across one another, that it was almost impossible to ride through the districts.” (Ibid. p.310.)
Mr. Gordon Cumming does not name the trees which he saw thus “uprooted” and “broken across,” nor has he given any idea of their size and weight; but Major Denham, who observed like traces of the elephant in Africa, saw only small trees overthrown by them; and Mr. Pringle, who had an opportunity of observing similar practices of the animals in the neutral territory of the Eastern frontier of the Cape of Good Hope, describes their ravages as being confined to the mimosas, “immense numbers of which had been torn out of the ground, and placed in an inverted position, in order to enable the animals to browse at their ease on the soft and juicy roots, which form a favourite part of their food. Many of the larger mimosas had resisted all their efforts; and indeed it is only after heavy rain, when the soil is soft and loose, that they ever successfully attempt this operation.” (Pringle’s Sketches of South Africa.) Sir S. Baker, whose observation confirms my own, as to the limited dimensions of the trees overthrown by elephants in Ceylon, says that in the vicinity of the White Nile, where the principal food of the elephant is the mimosa, he saw trees uprooted by them, which measured 30 feet high and 4 feet 6 inches in diameter. But he is “convinced that no single elephant could have overturned them; and the natives assured him that they mutually assist one another, and that several engage together in the work of overthrowing a large tree; the powerful tushes of some being applied as crowbars in the roots while others pull at the branches their trunks.” (The Albert Nyanz vol. i. p. 276.)
151 Menageries, etc. “The Elephant,” vol. ii. p. 23.
152 Menageries, etc. ch. vi. p. 138.
153 Menageries, etc. “The Elephant,” vol. i. p. 19.
154 The principal sound by which the mahouts in Ceylon direct the motions of the elephants is a repetition, with various modulations, of the words ur-re! ur-re! This is one of those interjections in which the sound is so expressive of the sense that persons in charge of animals of almost every description throughout the world appear to have adopted it with a concurrence that is very curious. The drivers of camels in Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt encourage them to speed by shouting ar-ré! ar-ré! The Arabs in Algeria cry eirich! to their mules. The Moors seem to have carried the custom with them into Spain, where mules are still driven with cries of arré (whence the muleteers derive their Spanish appellation of “arrieros”). In France the sportsman excites the hound by shouts of hare! hare! and the waggoner there turns his horses by his voice, and the use of the word hurhaut! In the North, “Hurs was a word used by the old Germans in urging their horses to speed:” and Sir Francis Head, in his Bubbles from the Brunnens, describes the Schwin-General shouting “ariff” to his pigs...“ariff! vociferated the old man, striding after one of his rebellious subjects; ariff! re-echoed his boy striding after another.” (P.94.)
To the present day, the herdsmen in Ireland, and parts of Scotland, drive their pigs with shouts of hurrish! a sound closely resembling that used by the mahouts in Ceylon.
155 On the Difference between the Human Membrana tympani and that of the Elephant. By Sir Everard Home, Bart., Philos. Trans. 1823. Paper by Prof. Harrison, Proc. Royal Irish Academy, vol. iii. p. 386.
156 I have already noticed the striking effect produced on the captive elephants in the corral, by the harmonious notes of an ivory flute; and on looking to the graphic description which is given by Ælian of the exploits which he witnessed as performed by the elephants exhibited at Rome, it is remarkable how very large a share of their training appears to have been ascribed to the employment of music.
Phile, in the account which he has given of the elephant’s fondness for music, would almost seem to have versified the prose narrative of Ælian, as he describes its excitement at the more animated portions, its step being regulated to the time and movements of the harmony: the whole “surprising in a creature whose limbs are without joints!”
For an account of the training and performances of the elephants at Rome, as narrated by Ælian, see the appendix to this chapter.
157 The Angler in the Lake District, p. 23. A similar story is told in the Memoir of Bishop Wilson, of an elephant which when suffering with ophthalmia had experienced the relief derived from a solution of nitrate of silver, and voluntarily offered its eye for a re-application of the remedy, on a second visit of the surgeon.
158 A shocking account of the death of this poor animal is given in Hone’s Every-Day Book, March 1830, p. 337.
159 Ælian, lib. xiii. c. 7.
160 The elephant which was dissected by Dr. Harrison of Dublin, in 1847, died of a febrile attack, after four or five days’ illness, which, as Dr. H. tells me in a private letter, was “very like scarlatina, at that time a prevailing disease: its skin in some places became almost scarlet.”
161 See a paper, entitled “Recollections of Ceylon,” in Fraser’s Magazine for December 1860.
162 Annales du Muséum, F. viii. 1805. p. 94, and Ossemens Fossiles, quoted by Owen, in the article on “Teeth,” in Todd’s Cyclop. of Anatomy, etc. vol. iv. p. 929.
163 An ordinary-sized elephant engrosses the undivided attention of three men. One, as his mahout or superintendent, and two as leaf-cutters, who bring him branches and grass for his daily supplies. An animal of larger growth would probably require a third leaf-cutter. The daily consumption is two cwt. of green food with about half a bushel of grain. When in the vicinity of towns and villages, the attendants have no difficulty in procuring an abundant supply of the branches of the trees to which elephants are partial; and in journeys through the forests and unopened country, the leaf-cutters are sufficiently expert in the knowledge of those particular plants with which the elephant is satisfied. Those that would be likely to disagree with him he unerringly rejects. His favourites are the palms, especially the cluster of rich, unopened leaves, known as the “cabbage,” of the coco-nut and areca; and he delights to tear open the young trunks of the palmyra and jaggery (Caryota urens) in search of the farinaceous matter contained in the spongy pith. Next to these come the varieties of fig-trees, particularly the sacred Bo (F. religiosa) which is found near every temple, and the na gaha (Messua ferrea), with thick dark leaves and a scarlet flower. The leaves of the jak-tree and bread-fruit (Artocarpus integrifolia, and A. incisa), the wood apple (Ægle Marmelos), Palu (Mimusops Indica), and a number of others well known to their attendants, are all consumed in turn. The stems of the plaintain, the stalks of the sugar-cane, and the feathery tops of the bamboos, are irresistible luxuries. Pine-apples, water-melons, and fruits of every description, are voraciously devoured, and a coconut when found is first rolled under foot to detach it from the husk and fibre, and then raised in his trunk and crushed almost without an effort, by his ponderous jaws.
The grasses are not found in sufficient quantity to be an item of daily fodder; the Mauritius or the Guinea grass is seized with avidity; lemon grass is rejected from its overpowering perfume, but rice in the straw, and every description of grain, whether growing or dry; gram (Cicer arietinum), Indian corn, and millet, are his natural food. Of such of these as can be found, it is the duty of the leaf-cutters, when in the jungle and on march, to provide a daily supply.
164 Aristoteles de Anim. 1. viii. c. 9.
165 Ménag. de Mus. Nat. p. 107.
166 Ostéographie, “Eléph.” p. 74.
167 Fleurens, De la Longévité Humaine, pp. 82, 89.
168 This remark regarding the elephant of Ceylon does not appear to extend to that of Africa, as I observe that Beaver, in his African Memoranda, says that “the skeletons of old ones that have died in the woods are frequently found.” (African Memoranda relative to an attempt to establish British Settlements at the Island of Bulama. Lond. 1815, p. 353.)
169 A corral was organised near Putlam in 1846, by Mr. Morris, the chief officer of the district. It was constructed across one of the paths to which the elephants resort in their frequent marches, and during the course of the proceedings two of the captured elephants died. Their carcases were left of course within the enclosure, which was abandoned as soon as the capture was complete. The wild elephants resumed their path through it, and a few days afterwards the headman reported to Mr. Morris that the bodies had been removed and carried outside the corral to a spot to which nothing but the elephants could have borne them.
170 Expositio de Eleph. l. 243.
171 The selection by animals of a place to die, is not confined to the elephant. Darwin says, that in South America “the guanacos (llamas) appear to have favourite spots for lying down to die; on the banks of the Santa Cruz river, in certain circumscribed spaces which were generally bushy and all near the water, the ground was actually white with their bones: on one such spot I counted between ten and twenty heads.”—Nat. Voy. ch. viii. The same has been remarked in the Rio Gallegos; and at St. Jago in the Cape de Verde Islands, Darwin saw a retired corner similarly covered with the bones of the goat, as if it were “the burial-ground of all the goats in the island.”
172 Arabian Nights’ Entertainment, Lane’s edition, vol. iii. p. 77.
173 See a disquisition on the origin of the story of Sinbad, by M. Reinaud, in the introduction prefixed to his translation of the Arabian Geography of Aboulfeda, vol. i. p. lxxvi.