THE KING'S MAHOUT 21 



that do not take kindly to the king's utilitarian 

 and amusement-making scheme. Aside from the 

 white elephant, which is an albino, a freak, there 

 are two varieties in Siam: a smallish kind with 

 tusks, quite easily broken to work if not too old; 

 and a larger, stronger, tuskless species that is not 

 so easily handled, is something of a fighter and is 

 avoided in the roval hunt in favor of the smaller, 

 some of which, however, carry ivory of splendid 

 proportions. The Siamese elephant belongs, of 

 course, to the Asiatic species, which in size both 

 of body and tusks, is inferior to the African. Of 

 the Asiatic, the Siamese averages neither so large 

 as the Indian nor so small as the Malayan; and 

 sometimes its ivory compares favorably with that 

 of any species. The largest tusk ever taken from 

 a Siamese elephant measures 9 feet, 10J inches in 

 length, and 8 inches in diameter at the base, and is 

 now in the Royal Museum at Bangkok. Inciden- 

 tally I wish to say that almost never have I found 

 tusks of any kind of elephant of the same length, 

 one showing usually more wear from root digging 

 or what not than the other. 



So soon as the scouts brought back word of our 

 being in touch with the herds, camp was pitched 

 and the tame elephants hobbled ; and then the en- 

 tire force spread out till a full one hundred yards 

 separated one man from another, making a pains- 



