210 IN THE INDIAN JUNGLE. 



difficulty of training these creatures were at all in 

 proportion to their size, a domesticated elephant 

 would be a rarity ; but the ease with which they 

 can be broken into service, and the very great 

 value of these services, account for their whole- 

 sale slavery from time immemorial. Eliminate 

 from a captured herd all elephants above forty 

 years of age, and in a fortnight's time the others 

 will be amenable to discipline, and in a month 

 may be set to work. I have given, in a previous 

 chapter, some account of the capture of a herd of 

 thirty-seven wild elephants in the presence of the 

 late Duke of Clarence, when he visited Mysore 

 in 1889. Within six weeks of their capture, most 

 of them were sufficiently broken in to permit of 

 their being brought into Bangalore and sent by 

 rail to Calicut on the Malabar coast, where these 

 animals are much in demand to work the timber 

 forests. 



At the Bangalore Railway station a large crowd 

 had assembled to witness the transference into 

 trucks of these unwieldy monsters. It was ex- 

 pected that the half-trained brutes would give 

 some trouble before they could be got into the 

 wagons intended to convey them to Calicut. 

 About a dozen of them were tethered in a 

 mango tope near the station, and when I saw 

 them they did not show the least uneasiness at 

 the crowds of human beings gathered around 

 them. While watching a young tusker regaling 

 himself on a bundle of sugar-cane, I suddenly felt 

 something cold and clammy encircling my neck 



