444 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



rush round the corral at a rapid pace, but all their attempts to 

 force the powerful fence are vain, for wherever they assail the 

 palisade, they are met with glaring flambeaux and bristling 

 spears, and on whichever side they approach, they are repulsed 

 with shouts and discharges of musketry. For upwards of an 

 hour their frantic efforts are continued with unabated energy, 

 till at length, stupified, exhausted, and subdued by apprehen- 

 sion and amazement, they form themselves into a circle, and 

 stand motionless under the dark shade of the trees in the 

 middle of the corral. 



To secure the entrapped animals, the assistance of tame 

 elephants or decoys is necessary, who, by occupying their atten- 

 tion and masking the movements of the nooser, give him an 

 opportunity of slipping one by one a rope round their feet until 

 their capture is completed. 



The quickness of eye displayed by the men in watching the 

 slightest movement of an elephant, and their expertness in 

 flinging the noose over its foot, and attaching it firmly before 

 the animal can tear it off with its trunk, are less admirable 

 than the rare sagacity of the decoys, who display the most 

 perfect conception of the object to be attained, and the means 

 of accomplishing it. Thus Sir Emerson Tennent saw more 

 than once, during a great elephant hunt which he witnessed in 

 1847, that when one of the wild elephants was extending his 

 trunk, and would have intercepted the rope about to be placed 

 over his leg, the decoy, by a sudden motion of her own trunk, 

 pushed his aside and prevented him ; and on one occasion, 

 when successive efforts had failed to put the noose over the leg 

 of an elephant who was already secured by one foot, but who 

 wisely put the other to the ground as often as it was attempted 

 to pass the noose under it, he saw the decoy watch her oppor- 

 tunity, and when his foot was again raised, suddenly push in 

 her own leg beneath it, and hold it up till the noose was at- 

 tached and drawn tight. 



It may easily be imagined that the passage from a life of 

 unfettered liberty in the cool and sequestered forest to one of 

 obedience and labour, must necessarily put the health of the 

 captured animals to a severe trial. Many perish in consequence 

 of the fearful wounds on the legs occasioned by their struggling 

 against the ropes, and it has frequently happened that a valu- 



