114 THE MINDS AND MANNERS 



burden. I call it astounding, because in comparison with what 

 could not be done with other wild animals caught when adult, 

 no other word is adequate to express the difference. The 

 average wild animal caught fully grown is "a terror," and so 

 far as training is concerned, perfectly impossible. 



There takes place in the keddah, or pen of capture, a mighty 

 struggle between the giant strength of the captive and the in- 

 genuity of man, ably seconded by a few powerful tame ele- 

 phants. When he finds his strength utterly overcome by 

 man's intelligence, he yields to the inevitable, and accepts the 

 situation philosophically. Sanderson once had a narrow escape 

 from death while on the back of a tame elephant inside a keddah, 

 attempting to secure a wild female. She fought his elephant 

 long and viciously, with the strength and courage of despair, 

 but finally she was overcome by superior numbers. Although 

 her attack on Sanderson in the keddah was of the most mur- 

 derous description, he states that her conduct after her defeat 

 was most exemplary, and she never afterward showed any signs 

 of ill-temper. 



Mr. Sanderson and an elephant-driver once mounted a 

 full-grown female elephant on the sixth day after her capture, 

 without even the presence of a tame animal. Sir Emerson Ten- 

 nent records an instance wherein an elephant fed from the hand 

 on the first night of its capture, and in a very few days evinced 

 pleasure at being patted on the head. Such instances as the 

 above can be multiplied indefinitely. To what else shall they 

 be attributed than philosophic reasoning on the part of the 

 elephant? The orang-utan and the chimpanzee, so often put 

 forward as his intellectual superior, when captured alive at 

 any other period than that of helpless infancy, are vicious, ag- 

 gressive, and intractable not only for weeks and months, but for 

 the remainder of their lives. Orangs captured when fully adult 

 exhibit the most tiger-like ferocity, and are wholly intractable. 



If dogs are naturally superior to elephants in natural intel- 

 lect, it should be as easy to tame and educate newly-caught wild 



