282 WILD ANIMALS. 



In India elephants are generally caught at the present day by 

 being driven into a stockade, which is built after a herd have been 

 surrounded in a forest by the hunters and their assistants. It is 

 rather dangerous work, and men are frequently killed while en- 

 gaged in it. Formerly elephants were driven into pitfalls, which 

 was the old native method of trapping the animals, but so much 

 cruelty and suffering resulted from this modus operandi that 

 it has been discontinued by order of the Government; and 

 although various other plans are occasionally resorted to, yet the 

 one above described is by far the most simple and effective. 

 Mr. Sanderson invariably resorts to it in his wonderfully suc- 

 cessful operations undertaken for the Indian Government. The 

 following quotation is from an account of the work given by 

 himself : — 



" Sometimes drives are conducted by torchlight, and these 

 seldom fail, owing to the elephant's fear of fire. The scenes on 

 these occasions are exciting beyond description. The elephants, 

 in rushing along, tear down large branches of trees that are 

 connected with the imdergrowth by climbing plants, and even 

 sometimes upset dry trees bodily in their passage. The cries of 

 the young, and the deep, thunder-like growls of the elders of the 

 herd, the continued crashing of the jungle, and the shots and 

 incessant cries of the men, form, with the unnatural light of the 

 fires and of torches moving through the forest paths, a scene that 

 cannot fade from the memory of any one who has witnessed it. 



" "When a herd has been driven into the stockade the gate is 

 closed and barricaded, and men with firebrands and spears repel 

 any attack upon it or the palisades ; but the trench is usually 

 suflBcient to deter the elephants from crossing it. On the same or 

 following day ten or twelve tame elephants are admitted with a 

 mahout and rope-tier upon each, and it is a very remarkable fact 

 that the wild ones very rarely attempt to dislodge the riders, as 

 they easily might. They naturally fail to comprehend anything 

 so foreign to their experience as a man upon an elephant's back. 

 I never knew a case, except one that happened to myself, of any 

 rider being attacked by a wild elephant. The mahouts separate 

 the wild elephants one by one from their companions, when their 



