Chap. V.] 
THE ELEPHANT. 
157 
Knox describes with circumstantiality the mode 
adopted, two centuries ago, by the servants of the King 
of Kandy to catch elephants for the royal stud. He 
says, "After discovering the retreat of such as have 
tusks, unto these they drive some she elephants, which 
they bring with them for the purpose, which, when 
once the males have got a sight of, they will never 
leave, but follow them wheresoever they go ; and the 
females are so used to it that they will do whatsoever, 
either by word or a beck, their keepers bid them. And 
so they delude them along through towns and coun- 
tries, and through the streets of the city, even to the 
very gates of the king's palace, where sometimes they 
seize upon them by snares, and sometimes by driving 
them into a kind of pound, they catch them." 1 
In Nepaul and Burmah, and throughout the Chin- 
Indian Peninsula, when in pursuit of single elephants, 
either rogues detached from the herd, or individuals 
caution with which the elephant earth, which he placed underfoot 
is supposed to reconnoitre suspi- as they were thrown down to him, 
cious ground, it has the further till he was enabled to step out on 
disadvantage of exposing him to solid ground, when the noosers and 
injury from bruises and disloca- decoys were in readiness to tie him 
tions in his fall. Still it was the up to the nearest tree." — See 
mode of capture employed by the Wolf's Life and Adventures, p. 
Singhalese, and so late as 1750 152. Shakspeare appears to have 
Wolf relates that the native chiefs been acquainted with the plan of 
of the Wanny, when capturing ele- taking elephants in pitfalls : Decius, 
phants for the Dutch, made " pits encouraging the conspirators, re- 
some fathoms deep in those places minds them of Csesar's taste for 
whither the elephant is wont to anecdotes of animals, by which he 
go in search of food, across which would undertake to lure him to his 
were laid poles covered with fate: 
branches and baited with the food " For he loves to hear 
of which he is fondest, making to- T h ?* unicorns may be betrayed with trees, 
wards which he finds himself taken A f 0 lesT mth glasses ; elephants with 
unawares. Thereafter being sub- Julius Caesar, Act ii. Scene I. 
dued by fright and exhaustion, he 1 Knox's Historical Relation of 
was assisted to raise himself to the Ceylon, a.d. 1681, part i. ch. vi. 
surface by means of hurdles and p. 21. 
