“When the first attempt was made to force them to walk, they made a supreme effort to remain, but a shower of blows from the trunk of Manjari decided their movements in a short space of time. When the poor brutes saw our party, they were terror-stricken and trembled violently; our weak appearance evidently produced a greater effect on their imagination, than did that of their captors.
“In a little time, a hunter crept behind each of them, and having given orders to have them held firmly, bound their hind feet with chains of special strength. From this moment a single elephant easily guarded them; they could only march slowly, and a child could have escaped them. Nothing now remained but to train them, and to make them forget, by kind and gentle treatment, their early life and the great forests in which they were born.
“Ordinarily it is possible to approach a captured elephant at the end of three days; on the eighth day the chains are taken off, and when a month has passed by the animal will go about quietly with the trained ones, imitating their actions, and offering to take part in their work. Indeed, it sometimes happens that, a few hours after the hunt is over, captors and captives are on the best of terms with each other, and the latter are set free by the Hindoo banters on the third or fourth day.
“When the elephant has tasted the delights of civilized life, he never returns to the jungle except to hunt, in his turn, his own fellows, and in this pursuit he displays as much cunning as the older ones did in capturing him.”
“Another mode of hunting elephants,” said Mr. Webb, “is by driving them into a keddah or corral. A strong yard is built with trunks of trees set in the ground like posts about two feet apart so that men can easily go in and out but elephants cannot pass.
