deposits in the Medical Museum of Chatham.

CHAP. V.

THE ELEPHANT.

* * * * *

_An Elephant Corral_.

So long as the elephants of Ceylon were merely required in small numbers
for the pageantry of the native princes, or the sacred processions of
the Buddhist temples, their capture was effected either by the
instrumentality of female decoys, or by the artifices and agility of the
individuals and castes who devoted themselves to their pursuit and
training. But after the arrival of the European conquerors of the
island, and when it had become expedient to take advantage of the
strength and intelligence of these creatures in clearing forests and
making roads and other works, establishments were organised on a great
scale by the Portuguese and Dutch, and the supply of elephants kept up
by periodical battues conducted at the cost of the government, on a plan
similar to that adopted on the continent of India, when herds varying in
number from twenty to one hundred and upwards are driven into concealed
enclosures and secured.

In both these processes, success is entirely dependent on the skill with
which the captors turn to advantage the terror and inexperience of the
wild elephant, since all attempts would be futile to subdue or confine
by ordinary force an animal of such strength and sagacity.[1]

[Footnote 1: The device of taking them by means of pitfalls still
prevails in India: but in addition to the difficulty of providing
against that caution with which the elephant is supposed to reconnoitre
suspicious ground, it has the further disadvantage of exposing him to
injury from bruises and dislocations in his fall. Still it was the mode
of capture employed by the Singhalese, and so late as 1750 WOLF relates
that the native chiefs of the Wanny, when capturing elephants for the
Dutch, made "pits some fathoms deep in those places whither the elephant
is wont to go in search of food, across which were laid poles covered
with branches and baited with the food of which he is fondest, making
towards which he finds himself taken unawares. Thereafter being subdued
by fright and exhaustion, he was assisted to raise himself to the
surface by means of hurdles and earth, which he placed underfoot as they
were thrown down to him, till he was enabled to step out on solid
ground, when the noosers and decoys were in readiness to tie him up to
the nearest tree."--See WOLF'S _Life and Adventures_, p.