300 HAUNTS AND HOBBIES 



The elephant, as all are aware, is long-lived. Its 

 age exceeds a century, but by how much is a matter on 

 which statements vary. The Emperor Akbar assigns a 

 hundred and twenty years as the duration of the life of 

 an elephant. Popular belief in India credits him with 

 thirty more years in addition. The elephant is con- 

 sidered to reach maturity at the age of fifty, and to 

 continue to live afterwards for twice that period. In 

 most cases, however, the length of an elephant's life 

 must be a matter of uncertainty, for when captured his 

 age can only be conjectured, and after capture he out- 

 lives so many owners and attendants that at the end 

 the period when he was acquired must be much a 

 matter of tradition. 



The great age to which elephants do live is more 

 striking when particular instances are given than when 

 merely generally stated. The two following cases always 

 much impressed me. The state elephant that carried 

 Warren Hastings was said to be alive, and still on 

 occasions to bear the howdah of the Governor-General, 

 up to a short period before my arrival in India ; and 

 the elephant of Sooruj Mull, the celebrated Raja of 

 Bhurtpore, was said to have been still ridden on state 

 occasions by his far-away successors after our capture 

 of Bhurtpore had reduced them from independent 

 sovereigns to the position of little more than large 

 landed proprietors. Sooruj Mull was killed in his 

 march to Delhi in 1763, and between his death and the 

 capture of Bhurtpore a period of nearly seventy years 

 had gone by; and in the interval so many and great 

 had been the changes that politically another world had 



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