The Elephant Herd a Republic
An elephant herd is a kind of republic, something like the United States of America, only much smaller and much simpler. So its leader is a sort of president. He is usually the wisest elephant in the herd.
You may like to know how the elephants choose their president. I shall tell you how they do that.
But you must first consider how the people of the United States choose their President. They find out who among their important men is best able to lead them in all the great duties of the nation. Then they choose him.
But if afterward they find that he is not leading the nation in the wisest manner, then the people of the United States choose another man to be their President the next time.
The elephants in a herd do something like that. They first follow the elephant who, they think, is best able to lead them. But if afterward they find that he is not leading them through the jungle in the right way, and that another elephant could lead them in a better manner, then they follow him instead. He then becomes the president of the herd.
"But what is the best way of leading the herd through the jungle?" you may ask.
I shall now tell you about that. The best way to lead the herd is to satisfy all their needs. So the president of the herd has four great duties.
The Duties of the President
First Duty: He must lead the herd in such a manner that all the elephants will get enough food to eat every day.
Second Duty: He must lead the herd in such a manner that all the elephants will get enough water to drink every day.
Third Duty: He must keep order in the herd, and not allow any naughty elephant to fight or quarrel.
Fourth Duty: He must guide the elephants in such a manner as to avoid all danger from outside; and if such danger does happen to come, he must guard the herd from that danger.
I shall now tell you about these four duties more fully.
He Must Provide Daily Food
Elephants are such large animals that they need a great amount of food. So they have to walk a long way every day, munching the leaves of the trees as they go.
They walk in line, one behind another, as that is the easiest method of walking through the thick jungle; for then one gap through the jungle is enough for all the elephants to go through, one at a time, and they need not make a different gap for each elephant.
Now you will understand that if that one gap is big enough for the largest elephant to go through, it is of course big enough for all the elephants to go through. So, if the largest elephant walks first, in front of the line of elephants, he can force a way through the thick jungle that will be big enough for all the other elephants who come behind him.
So usually the largest and strongest bull elephant is the leader of the herd—if he also has the other qualities of a president, which I shall presently describe more fully. To have all the qualities of a president, he must not only be strong, but also wise and clever. Why? Because even in merely going through the jungle a wise leader avoids many difficulties. It might be that the jungle straight ahead was very thick, and it would be hard to force a way through it; but by turning a little to the right or to the left, an easier passage could be made. This a wise leader would find out, and then turn in that direction.
Again, in the jungle, the ground is sometimes too soft; it might be made of clay which had become soft owing to rain a few days before. But elephants are such heavy animals that they cannot go far over soft ground, as their feet would sink in too deep. And the ground might be covered with bushes or tall grass, so that the elephants could not see to what distance the ground was soft. They might not mind going over soft ground for a few yards, but they would not like to go over such ground for a whole mile.
Elephant Leading Herd through the Jungle
So a wise leader would know by glancing around how far the ground was likely to be soft; and if he learned that it was likely to be soft for a large area, he would turn at once and go around it. But a foolish leader might take the herd right into the soft ground, and they would all be stuck in the mud, and have a lot of trouble getting out of it again.
So if the herd has chosen merely the biggest and strongest elephant to be their president and he makes such mistakes as that, they soon depose him; that is, they no longer follow him. They look around for some other leader who can discover a better way, and they follow him instead. And if afterward they find that he is wise and clever, and does not make mistakes, they follow him as their leader every day after that, even if he is not quite so big and strong as the other elephant was.
He then becomes the new president, if he is at least strong enough to make a good gap through the jungle. Most of the elephants could pass through that; only the biggest bull, the deposed president, would have the trouble of enlarging the gap with his body in going through it. And this would serve him right!
In the same manner the leader of the herd must not go over ground that is too hard, for elephants are such heavy animals that it jars the bones of their feet to go over hard ground for a great distance. If there has been no rain for several weeks, then in a hot country the ground gets very hard in some places. So if there has been no rain near a herd for some time, a wise leader avoids these hard places.
So, as you see, an elephant leader has to be quite clever in merely avoiding difficulties, in the daily search for food. And that is not all! The food itself may be plentiful in one part of the jungle, and rather scarce in another; for in one direction there may have been just enough showers recently to bring out the fresh leaves on the trees; but in another direction there may have been no rain at all for some time, and so there would be no fresh leaves there.
Why, even in your own town there may be a good shower of rain in one part of the town, and no rain at all in another part. So it might be in the jungle; a wise leader would know this by instinct, and he would take the herd along that part of the jungle where there had been recent showers of rain, and where there would be enough fresh leaves.
He Must Provide Daily Drink
After the elephants have had enough to eat for the day, they must have enough clear water to drink. And to get this is the hardest daily duty of the leader.
In the jungle, even if the leader makes a little mistake and goes the wrong way, there may still be enough to eat, because the elephants can always find enough trees in the end by going a little farther: so they would have only a little more trouble in getting their food, if the leader made a mistake. But with water it is quite different—the leader may find no water at all, if he makes a mistake and leads the herd the wrong way.
"Then how must he lead the herd so as to find water, as well as food?" you may ask.
I shall tell you. In most jungles there is a river or even a small stream from which the elephants can drink. But the river or stream may go winding in and out of the jungle, so that it is in one part of the jungle but not in another part. So a wise leader tries to keep his herd near one of those parts of the jungle through which the river flows.
In fact, if the elephants and even the other wild animals are lucky enough to find a fairly big river, and the jungle near that river has plenty of food in it, then the animals stay near there almost all the time. They eat from the jungle and drink from the river; and sometimes they come to the very same place to drink—as at the Midnight Pool, which I described to you in Book I.
So if the leader of the elephant herd is lucky enough to find such a jungle, with plenty of food and a big river in it, he keeps the herd there all the time; and then they have no more trouble about food or drink.
But suppose the leader cannot find such a place? Suppose there is a river, but not enough food near the river? Then what does a wise leader do?
He leads the herd in such a way as to make a kind of curve. He goes into the jungle by the easiest way in the beginning; then, after the elephants have eaten a little, he starts turning slightly toward the direction in which the river flows. When the elephants have eaten a little more, he turns still more in that direction.
In this manner he leads the herd in a kind of curve toward the river, browsing all the way from the trees near by. So, at the end of the day, when the elephants have had enough to eat, they reach the river and have also enough to drink. Is not that a very clever method of providing both food and drink for the herd?
If the herd sleep near the bank that night, they start from there the next morning in their search for food; and they usually go into the jungle by the same path by which they came. But on returning to the river to drink that night, the leader need not bring them back by exactly the same path.
The fact that they did not have enough to eat right near the river shows that the jungle is not very thick there; so the elephants will have no trouble in making a fresh path, a little higher up the river, or a little lower down. A wise leader usually does that: he leads the herd to the river slightly higher up or lower down, and so he makes a slightly different curve through the jungle. Why? Because if he kept to exactly the same curve from the jungle to the river every day, the herd would eat up all the leaves along that path in a few days. So, by changing the curve a little from time to time, he allows fresh leaves to grow there meanwhile.
You now understand why the president of the elephant herd must be wise and clever to do all that I have told you so far. Even among men the President of a Republic has similar duties to attend to, though in a different manner: he too has to govern his country in such a manner as to provide the people with their daily wants, if they obey the laws and do honest labor.
In the elephant herd everyone has to do honest work, as he has to gather his own food; and he has also to obey the laws of the herd. I shall now tell you about that.
He Must Keep Order in the Herd
The third duty of the elephant leader is to keep order in the herd. Most elephants are by nature gentle, docile, and obedient. That is why men can tame them and make them work; otherwise, if elephants were by nature fierce and disobedient, men could not train them so perfectly as to perform at a circus, or carry people in a procession. So even in the jungle, where the elephants are wild, they usually obey the leader and keep the laws of the herd.
These laws chiefly concern their daily food and drink. As I have told you, in their daily search for food the elephants march in a line, one behind another. A selfish elephant in the middle of the line might want to stop and eat up all the leaves on a tree near him; and if he did so, he would block the way for those behind him, and besides, there would be no leaves on that tree for them to eat when they came to it.
So there is a general rule in the herd that each elephant must take just a few of the leaves from a tree, and then move on; and if instead he does block the way, the elephants behind him may push him forward and make him move on.
"But," you may ask, "why can't the other elephants behind him also stop and eat up all the leaves on the trees near them?"
Because then all the trees on that line of march would be bare of leaves, and it might take a whole month for fresh leaves to grow there again. But if the herd took only a portion of the leaves from each tree, there would be enough food for them along that path if they happened to visit it again in a few days.
In fact, the elephants need make only a few such paths through the jungle, if they eat only part of the leaves at a time along any of the paths. Then they can visit these paths in turn on other days, and always find enough food there—because the fresh leaves constantly growing on the trees would make up for the small portion they had eaten.
So you understand how wise the elephants are in having that law in the herd.
"But," you may say, "if they were to eat all the leaves on a tree, their path would be a short one; while if they eat only a portion of the leaves, their path would be much longer, as they must nibble from many more trees to satisfy their hunger."
That is quite true. But there is no advantage in having a short path, because at the end of their march in search of food they must find water to drink, as I have already told you—and they may have to go several miles to reach the nearest stream. So they might as well nibble from the trees all the way to the stream, especially as elephants can easily march ten or twelve miles in that manner every day.
Besides, after taking a bunch of leaves from a tree, they must chew it before taking the next bite; so, meanwhile, they might just as well walk on to the next tree. In fact, if they have not quite finished chewing, most elephants pass by one or two trees before taking the next bite. That shows how really wise they are. For then they are sure of finding enough food along that path when they visit it again a few days later.
It is the president of the herd who sets a good example to the others in doing all these wise things. As he walks at the head of the line, he sees at a glance what is the best thing to do in that particular path, whether to nibble a little from every tree, or to pass by a few trees without nibbling from them at all. And whatever he does, all the other elephants do after him.
My dear children, it is exactly the same among us. When food is scarce in a country and people must be careful, then it is the President who tells us how to portion out the food supply in the country. Otherwise, some people would be wasteful and throw food away—and others would not have enough to eat.
It is very important to learn from your childhood to be careful of food. Do you know that in the United States every man, woman, and child on an average throws away every year seven dollars' worth of food on the plate? That would be enough to feed all the people in the poorhouses and the hospitals.
Elephants are most careful of their food. Their president is all the time thinking of the best method of making the food supply of the jungle last them from season to season. But the other elephants must help him to do that, by following his good example. If any particular elephant is selfish and wants to eat up at once all the food near him, he is pushed out of the line by the other elephants, as I have already told you. If he is naughty again, he is more severely punished.
How he is punished, I shall tell you in another chapter. I shall then tell you how all sorts of naughty elephants are punished; for, just like people in a country, I am sorry to say that there are in the jungle a few elephants that do not obey the law.
An elephant can be selfish not only in eating, but also in drinking. You will remember what I told you in Book I—how all the elephants stand in a line along the bank of a stream and drink; and after they have all satisfied their thirst, they may jump into the water to bathe and swim.
It would be very selfish for an elephant to jump into the water before the others had finished drinking; for then he would muddy the water which some of the others were still drinking. And for such conduct an elephant is very severely punished.
But the very worst offense in an elephant herd is quarrelling and fighting; for, sometimes, two elephants do quarrel and fight, just like a couple of naughty boys in school. But there is never any real need to quarrel in an elephant herd; for if one of the elephants has done wrong or broken the rules of the herd, he will be punished by the president of the herd—just as in school a naughty boy would be punished by the teacher or by the head of the school.
It is not necessary for any other elephant in the herd to quarrel or fight with the naughty elephant, even if he has been injured by him; the president of the herd will punish the naughty elephant soon enough. So if two elephants do fight, both of them are punished; of course the one who began the fight is punished more severely than the other.
He Must Avoid Danger from Outside
The president of the herd must lead the elephants in such a manner as to avoid any danger that may come to the herd from outside. In the jungle there are other wild animals; most of them are, of course, too small to be able to hurt so large an animal as an elephant; but a tiger is so strong and so fierce that he could kill a small, half-grown elephant.
The tiger could hide in the jungle, and if the small elephant happened to stray from the herd, the tiger could spring upon it and kill it. So the president of the herd usually keeps the elephants away from any part of the jungle which he knows to be infested by tigers.
How does he know that? By the paw marks made on the ground by the tigers. For the tigers leave plenty of paw marks on the ground in coming in and out of their dens to hunt their prey every day. So if the president of the elephant herd comes across a line of such paw marks, he turns aside and leads the herd in another direction.
Of course, if the herd happened to meet a tiger quite suddenly, they would at once face the tiger. And the tiger would never dare to attack even the smallest elephant if the big ones were near, for they could drive him off with their tusks or trample upon him.
But the greatest danger that can come to an elephant herd from outside is from men. Men sometimes go into the jungle to shoot wild elephants with guns, or to catch them alive in huge traps. So the leader of the herd must find out where the traps are, or where the hunters are hiding; and then he must avoid such places.
You will remember what I told you about Salar and his father in Book I. Salar was the boy elephant who nearly fell into a most tricky trap, but his wise old father suspected the trap and called to Salar to halt; and because Salar obeyed his father and halted at once, he just escaped falling into that awful trap.
Well, in the jungle hunters lay all kinds of traps to catch wild elephants alive; and sometimes for several years the hunters try over and over again to catch the elephants, if they fail to catch them at once. So the president of an elephant herd has to look out for traps all the time; and the herd that has the wisest president escapes capture for the longest time.
In fact, as Salar is an actual elephant, not an imaginary one, I may tell you that his father was such a wily leader of his herd that he kept them from capture for ten years longer than the leader of any other elephant herd in that jungle.
As for hunters who seek to kill wild elephants with guns, the leader of the herd has to be even more careful in avoiding them. These hunters usually hide behind bushes, and try to creep up to the elephants; and when they are within a hundred yards of the elephants, they begin shooting them. Then the leader of the herd has to prove his wisdom.
A foolish leader would stand still, or even try to charge the hunters; and then more of the elephants would get killed. But a wise leader gives the signal to run away as soon as he hears the sound of the first gun; then at most only one or two of the elephants are killed—and sometimes none at all.
Why? Because to kill an elephant with a gun a hunter must hit him exactly in one particular place on the body—behind the elephant's ear, where the skin is thin. At the first shot the hunter may not hit the elephant just there, but inflict only a trifling wound elsewhere on his thick skin. So by running away at once an elephant may save his life.
But as all leaders are not so wise, the hunters usually manage to kill one or two of the elephants. I may tell you that these hunters kill the elephants merely to get their tusks, which they sell as ivory.
It is a shame to kill such wonderful animals just for money; and you ought to know that in some parts of Africa almost all the elephants have now been killed. If the hunters continue to do that, there will be no elephants left in Africa in a few years. Then the hunters will not be able to get the very ivory for the sake of which they now kill the elephants.
But you will be pleased to know that in India and other countries of Asia nobody is allowed to kill a wild elephant; for if anyone did so, he would be put into jail. Special hunters are allowed to catch wild elephants alive, as I have already told you; and then the elephants are tamed and trained to do all kinds of useful work, such as to pile logs, build bridges, make roads, and lay water-pipes (see [Frontispiece]). Some of these elephants are also taught to do tricks in a circus, or to carry grand people in a procession.
"Then how do people in India get their ivory, if they never kill an elephant?" you may ask.
They get the ivory when the elephant dies naturally; and the ivory is just as good then as before. Is not that very wise? The people of India first get the help of the elephants in doing all their heavy work, and at last they get the ivory also.
There are huge buildings in India, some of which are more than two thousand years old, which are so wonderful that engineers in America and Europe do not know exactly how those buildings were erected. There is a particular temple on the top of a mountain; and that mountain is 6000 feet high. The ceiling over the center of the temple is a huge circular piece of marble; and that marble ceiling is so large that for a long time people in America and Europe did not know how it was dragged up to the top of the mountain, and then placed over the temple. But now we know that a team of trained elephants was used to do that.
Trained Elephants at the Court of a King
You will be pleased to know, too, that the people who built that temple are called Jains, whom I mentioned in Book I, page 163 (footnote), as the people who are kind to all animals, and who never hurt even the smallest insect. Instead, these mild and gentle people have taught dumb animals to help them build one of the greatest wonders of the world.
How the elephants were taught to do that, I shall tell you in the next Book.