First Employments. i6i 



The first employment to which an elephant is put is to 

 tread clay in a brick-field, or to draw a waggon in double 

 harness with a tame companion. But the work in which 

 the display of sagacity renders his labour of the highest 

 value, is that which involves the moving of heavy mate- 

 rials ; and hence in dragging and piling timber, or con- 

 veying stones 1 for the construction of retaining walls and 

 the approaches to bridges his services in an unopened 

 country are of the utmost importance. When roads are 

 to be constructed along the face of steep declivities, and 

 the space is so contracted that risk is incurred either of 

 the working elephant falling over the precipice or of rocks 

 slipping down from above, not only are the measures to 

 which he resorts the most judicious and reasonable that 

 could be devised, but if urged by his keeper to adopt any 

 other, he manifests a reluctance sufficient to show that he 

 has balanced in his ov/n mind the comparative advantages 

 of each. An elephant appears on all occasions to com- 

 prehend the purpose and object that he is expected to 

 promote, and hence he voluntarily executes a variety of 

 details without any guidance whatever from his keeper. 

 This is one characteristic in which this animal manifests 

 a superiority over the horse ; although an elephant's 

 strength in proportion to its weight is not so great as that 

 of the latter. 



His minute motions when engrossed by such opera- 

 tions, the activity of his eye, and the earnestness of his 



' A correspondent informs me that stones, moves them by means of a rope, 

 on the Makibar coast of India, the which he either draws with his forehead, 

 elephant, when employed in dragging or manages by seizing it in his teeth. 



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