THE GREATEST HUNT IN THE WORLD 



By Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore 



Foreign Secretary National Geographic Society, Author op "Winter 

 India," "China — the Long-lived Empire," "Jinrikisha Days in Japan," 

 "Java, the Garden of the East," etc. 



This is the first of a series of six articles by Miss Scidmore which will be published in 

 early numbers of the National Geographic Magazine. Each article will describe 

 one of the wonders of the East, and each will be profusely illustrated. 



ALL other hunts and drives, bat- 

 tues, and baggings of big game 

 are insignificant compared to the 

 elephant hunt of the King of Siam. It 

 is an old as well as a picturesque custom 

 and, surviving to the Twentieth Century 

 unchanged in all its important features, 

 is still the delight of the court of Siam, 

 the capital, and all the water-side country 

 around old Ayuthia. It used to be an 

 annual affair, but there have been serious 

 lapses in this reign, owing one time to the 

 King's absence in Europe, again to his 

 little discord with France, and yet again 

 to his ill health. There are forebodings 

 lest the great chase be given up of neces- 

 sity, as time goes on and enterprising 

 Siam keeps up its irrepressible gait of 

 modernity. Progress and the new agri- 

 culture, railway extension and irrigation 

 are turning the jungle into limitless rice 

 plains, and the screech of the locomotive 

 drowns the trumpeting of the wild ele- 

 phants and scatters them in panic to fur- 

 ther jungle country. 



The royal elephant hunt was a more 

 serious affair, perhaps, when that majestic 

 beast was the only means of royal travel on 

 land, and the elephant corps and elephant 

 batteries were the corps d 'elite and most 

 important branch of the army. London- 

 built landaus on pneumatic tires and auto- 

 mobiles stand in the palace courts, and 

 long-range, quick-firing machine guns of 

 the Japanese pattern are the equipment of 

 the royal artillery. Save for tradition 

 and sentiment, for occasional state splen- 

 dors and parades, the elephant has no 



part in Bangkok court life, and the ele- 

 phant's occupation would be gone were 

 it not for the survey corps, the road- 

 builders, and official traveling in the far- 

 away provinces, and the teak forests and 

 timber yards, where American overhead 

 machinery cannot altogether supplant the 

 intelligent strength of the elephant. 



For the great hunts at Ayuthia, site of 

 the abandoned capital, the hunters go out 

 weeks beforehand and beat the jungles 

 for a hundred miles to north and east, 

 and the cordon of tame elephants slowly 

 closes around the wild elephants and 

 drives them in a herd of two and three 

 hundred and more down to the river 

 bank, and across to the King's kraal. 



The last hunt of this kind was arranged 

 for the special enjoyment of the Crown 

 Prince after his return from his studies 

 at Oxford and his tour of America, and 

 before he assumed the robes of a 

 Buddhist priest and spent the regulation 

 three months in a monastery, in accord- 

 ance with old Siamese custom. It was 

 a most successful hunt, and the series of 

 large photographs, which are reproduced 

 here, present the different stages of the 

 hunt and show the herd of two hundred 

 and fify wild elephants in every pose. 



For the hunt week, the court stays in 

 residence at the near-by palace of Bang- 

 pa-in, on the river banks, and the diplo- 

 matic and other foreign guests go up to 

 Ayuthia on their house-boats, which lux- 

 uriously lodge them during the time. All 

 Bangkok that can find foothold, goes up 

 the fortv miles by train, and all the river- 



