20 THE KING'S MAHOUT 



Into this keddah, through a funnel-shaped runway 

 reaching to the human circle, the frightened, 

 scrambling, grunting herd is urged by the beaters 

 on tame elephants ; once within, the wild elephants 

 are noosed one by one by the legs and tied to trees 

 by the catchers mounted on the tame elephants. 

 All the while the human circle is in evidence around 

 the outside of the keddah to help on the deception 

 played upon the huge beasts, that they cannot 

 escape. 



The native way of catching elephants both in 

 India and in the Far East, is usually by the simple 

 means of digging pitfalls along their routes to the 

 rivers ; for the elephant is a thirsty beast and when 

 in herds makes beaten paths to water, always 

 returning by the same way. Thus easily they fall 

 into the waylaying pits, which are about eight feet 

 wide on the top, six feet wide at the bottom and 

 eight feet deep. 



In Siam, catching elephants is a different and an 

 easier game for several reasons; because (1) the 

 region over which they roam is much more con- 

 fined than in India, and (2) as the so-called hunt is 

 a periodical event of many years' standing, large 

 numbers of jungle elephants have been rounded up 

 and corralled so comparatively often as to have 

 become semi-tame. Of course there are many in 

 every drive that have not been corralled, and some 



