ELEPHANTS. 299 



animals as an attraction for his circus. This specimen was tem- 

 porarily lodged on its way through England in the Zoological 

 Gardens, and became at once an object of great curiosity ; the chief 

 opinion, however, was that the animal was disappointing and not 

 very much out of the common, and hints that it was not a genuine 

 " white elephant " were freely expressed by visitors who went 

 there under the impression they were going to see an extraordinary 

 beast with a snow-white skin. 



The Madras Mail published a copy of the compact made by 

 Barnum's agent with the Burmese owners of this animal, which 

 concluded thus: "We have sworn him (Barnum's agent) before 

 God and under the Boe (holy) tree on the hill, he promised that 

 he will take him (the elephant) straight to his master to love and 

 protect him from misery ; if not he knows that the sin cannot 

 escape hell. We have got from Muilikin Master Rs. 15,000 to 

 repair our God's images and monastries. We write and give 

 this document with our free will and consent." 



Individual elephants are occasionally born, or afterwards become, 

 coloured out of the ordinary, for Robert Knox in his " Historical 

 Relations of the Island of Ceylon " (wherein he was a captive for 

 nearly twenty years), written in 1681, says that in the collection of 

 animals belonging to the King of Kandy, there was a black tiger, 

 a milk-white deer, and he " hath also an elephant spotted or speckled 

 all the body over, which was lately caught ; and though he hath 

 many and very stately elephants, and may have as many more as 

 he pleases, yet he prefers this before them all." Andreas Boues, 

 writing in 1600, relates that the King of Pegu hath four white 

 elephants, and if any other hath any he will seek them by favour 

 or force. . . . He had also hlach elephants nine cubits high, and 

 five thousand elephants of war. 



The whole history of Asia is full of the history of the elephant. 

 The large number that were kept by the various emperors of 

 China, Hindoostan, and Persia, either for war purposes or to swell 

 the magnificence of their personal retinue, is truly incredible. 

 But no chapter of this history is so strange as that wherein is 

 recorded the account of the wars undertaken for one particular 

 white elephant in the sixteenth century. We read that King 



