58 Wild Beasts 



of invention, a height and length and breadth of mendacity 

 which it would be vain to expect to find exceeded in this 

 imperfect state of existence. 



The government also often wants elephants, and when 

 this is the case, captures are made in a different manner, 

 and upon a greater scale. What is done is to surround a 

 herd and drive it into an enclosure called a keddah. This 

 is often a very complicated and difficult thing to accom- 

 plish. Far away in some wild unsettled region of the 

 Nilgiri or Satpura hills, the uplands of Mysore, or else- 

 where, an English official pitches his tent, surveys the 

 country, and sends out scouts. To him sooner or later 

 comes a person without any clothes to speak of, but with 

 the most exquisite manners, and says that, owing to his 

 Excellency's good fortune, by which all adverse influences 

 have been happily averted, he begs to represent that a 

 herd of elephants, who were created on purpose to be cap- 

 tured by him, is marked down. Then the commander-in- 

 chief of the catching forces opens a campaign that may 

 last for weeks, or even months. The topography has been 

 carefully studied with reference to occupying positions 

 which will prevent the animals from breaking through a 

 line of posts that are established around them, and between 

 which communication is kept up by flying detachments. 

 Drafts of men from the district and a trained contingent 

 the officer brought with him, are manoeuvred so that they 

 can concentrate upon the point selected for their keddah, 

 which is not constructed till towards the close of these 

 movements, since the area surrounded is very extensive 

 and it is not at first known exactly where it must be 



