ming, the presence of the tame ones can generally be
dispensed with after two months, and the captive may then be ridden by
the driver alone; and after three or four months he may be entrusted
with labour, so far as regards docility;--but it is undesirable, and
even involves the risk of life, to work an elephant too soon; it has
frequently happened that a valuable animal has lain down and died the
first time it was tried in harness, from what the natives believe to be
"broken heart,"--certainly without any cause inferable from injury or
previous disease.[1] It is observable, that till a captured elephant
begins to relish food, and grow fat upon it, he becomes so fretted by
work, that it kills him in an incredibly short space of time.

[Footnote 1: Captain YULE, in his _Narrative of an Embassy to Ava in_
1855, records an illustration of this tendency of the elephant to sudden
death; one newly captured, the process of taming which was exhibited to
the British Envoy, "made vigorous resistance to the placing of a collar
on its neck, and the people were proceeding to tighten it, when the
elephant, which had lain down as if quite exhausted, reared suddenly on
the hind quarters, and fell on its side--_dead_!"--P. 104.

Mr. STRACHAN noticed the same liability of the elephants to sudden death
from very slight causes; "of the fall." he says, "at any time, though on
plain ground, they either die immediately, or languish till they die;
their great weight occasioning them so much hurt by the fall."--_Phil.
Trans._ A.D. 1701, vol. xxiii. p. 1052.]

The first employment to which an elephant is put is to tread clay in a
brick-field, or to draw a waggon in double harness with a tame
companion. But the work in which the display of sagacity renders his
labours of the highest value, is that which involves the use of heavy
materials; and hence in dragging and piling timber, or moving stones[1]
for the construction of retaining walls and the approaches to bridges,
his services in an unopened country are of the utmost importance. When
roads are to be constructed along the face of steep declivities, and the
space is so contracted that risk is incurred either of the working
elephant falling over the precipice or of rocks slipping down from
above, not only are the measures to which he resorts the most judicious
and reasonable that could be devised, but if urged by his keeper to
adopt any other, he manifests a reluctance sufficient to show that