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 

 tionsinhis 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 Caesar'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- ^hat unicorns may be betrayed with trees 



, i . -| i -i -, • i « And bears with glasses : elephants with 



wards which he finds himself taken holes:' 



unawares. Thereafter being sub- Julius Cesar, 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. vL 



surface by means of hurdles and p. 21. 



