230 TWC YEAES IN THE JUNGLE. 



what other would have so quickly learned that mind is superior to 

 matter, that man is master of the dumb brutes, or would have suc- 

 cumbed so gracefully to the inevitable ? 



While staying at Sungam, the elephant camp and timber depot 

 on the AnimaUais, I had a fine opportunity to watch the elephants 

 at work and to learn something of their management. Many an 

 hour I spent in the timber yard, quite fascinated by the sight of 

 those giants at work. The first work of the elephant is in the jungle 

 where thei'e are no roads for carts. The teak-trees have been felled 

 and hewn into timbers from 9 to 12 inches square and 15 to 20 

 feet long, with a handle called a " drag-hole " at one end, through 

 which the drag-rope is passed and made fast. The drag-roj)e is 

 about two and a half inches in diameter and eighteen feet long, and 

 is made by the Mulcers from the inner bark of a tree called "vaca 

 nar " {Sterculia villosa). These ropes are very strong, unaffected 

 by wetting, but are also quite soft, so that the elephants use them 

 without injuring their lips. One end of the rope is made fast in 

 the drag-hole of the log to be moved, the elephant seizes the free 

 end with his trunk and places it between his huge molars, and with 

 the log almost by his side he bends his head toward it, grips the 

 rope firmly between his teeth, and drags it along. If he is a tusker 

 he puts the lope over his tusk next the log, which gives him con- 

 siderable leverage. When the rojje is about to slip between the 

 teeth, or the jaws begin to tire at a critical moment, I have often 

 seen the elephant wraj) his trunk tightly around the rope and puU 

 ^^gorously with it, apparently to assist his jaws. 



This method of working elephants always seemed to me a 

 heathenish and stupid one, and I do not see how it can be charac- 

 terized in any other way. Instead of walking straight away with 

 the log, as the animal would undoubtedly do in proper harness, the 

 poor beast is obliged to stop every fifty yards to rest his jaws and 

 neck, upon which the whole strain comes. It is entirely unnatural 

 for any animal to draw a load from the head, with its neck bent 

 around sidewise, instead of from the shoulder or the girth. 



In turning square timber a tusker puts his tusks under the 

 edge, lifts upward and forward at an angle of forty-five degrees 

 and easily throws it over ; but the female or muckna, having no 

 tusks, has to kneel, place the base of the trunk, not the forehead, 

 against the side of the log, and by a downward and forward press- 

 ure against the upper edge of the log, push it over. In either 

 case the work is done in less than a minute, if there be no special 



