244 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



must be very carefully trained and entered to tteir game. 

 A good mahout, or driver, is very difficult to obtain. They 

 differ as much, in their command over elephants as do 

 riders of horses ; and a plucky driver will generally make a 

 staunch elephant, and vice versa. The elephant should 

 first be accustomed to the firing of guns from his back, and 

 to seeing deer and other harmless animals shot before him 

 in company with a staunch companion. He must not be 

 forced in at a tiger, or at a hog or bear, which he detests 

 even more, until he has acquired some confidence, though 

 in some few cases he will stand to any animal from the 

 very first. When they have seen a few tigers neatly dis- 

 posed of, most elephants acquire confidence in their human 

 allies, and become sufficiently steady in the field ; but their 

 ultimate qualities will depend much on natural tempera- 

 ment. The more naturally courageous an elephant is, 

 the better chance there is of his remaining staunch after 

 having been actually mauled by a tiger, an accident to 

 be avoided, of course, as long as possible. It will occur 

 sometimes, however, in the best hands; and then a 

 naturally timid animal, who has only been made staunch 

 by a long course of immunity from injury, will probably 

 be spoilt for fife, while a really plucky elephant is often 

 rendered bolder than before by such an occurrence. 



Some elephants which are in other respects perfect 

 shikaris will retain some ineradicable peculiarity which 

 may almost unfit them for use in hunting. For some 

 time I had a female who would stand anything in the 

 way of animals (I once had her charged close up by a 

 whole family of bears — a terrible trial for any elephant), 

 but who bolted invariably in the utmost panic from the 

 loud shout of a human voice. On one such occasion she 

 carried a cargo of native clerks into the middle of a deep 

 river, and left them to swim for their Uves. On another, 

 I thought I should die of laughing, though her prank 

 nearly ended in the death of an unhappy Gond. He 

 had been taken out with her by the attendant whose 

 business it is to cut branches of trees for fodder, and was 

 left on her back to pack the load, while the other went 

 up the tree to cut down branches. In the meantime a 



