ith offenders, to stop their allowance of sugar canes or of
jaggery; or to restrain them from eating their own share of fodder and
leaves till their companions shall have finished; and in such cases the
consciousness of degradation betrayed by the looks and attitudes of the
culprit is quite sufficient to identify him, and to excite a feeling of
sympathy and pity.

The elephant's obedience to his keeper is the result of affection, as
well as of fear; and although his attachment becomes so strong that an
elephant in Ceylon has been known to remain out all night, without food,
rather than abandon his mahout, lying intoxicated in the jungle, yet he
manifests little difficulty in yielding the same submission to a new
driver in the event of a change of attendants. This is opposed to the
popular belief that "the elephant cherishes such an enduring remembrance
of his old mahout, that he cannot easily be brought to obey a
stranger."[1] In the extensive establishments of the Ceylon Government,
the keepers are changed without hesitation, and the animals, when
equally kindly treated, are usually found to be as tractable and
obedient to their new driver as to the old, in fact so soon as they have
become familiarised with his voice. This is not, however, invariably the
case; and Mr. CRIPPS, who had remarkable opportunities for observing the
habits of the elephant in Ceylon, mentioned to me an instance in which
one of a singularly stubborn disposition occasioned some inconvenience
after the death of its keeper, by refusing to obey any other, till its
attendants bethought them of a child about twelve years old, in a
distant village, where the animal had been formerly picketed, and to
whom it had displayed much attachment. The child was sent for: and on
its arrival the elephant, as anticipated, manifested extreme
satisfaction, and was managed with ease, till by degrees it became
reconciled to the presence of a new superintendent.

[Footnote 1: _Menageries, &c._, "The Elephant," vol. i. p. 19.]

It has been said that the mahouts die young, owing to some supposed
injury to the spinal column from the peculiar motion of the elephant;
but this remark does not apply to those in Ceylon, who are healthy, and
as long lived as other men. If the motion of the elephant be thus
injurious, that of the camel must be still more so; yet we never hear of
early death ascribed to this cause by the Arabs.

The voice of the keeper, with a very limited voc