XXXVI
ELEPHANT ROPE DANCING
The ease with which the elephant is taught to perform the most difficult feats forms a remarkable contrast to its huge size and clumsiness. Aristotle tells us that in ancient times elephants were taught by their keepers to throw stones at a mark, to cast up arms in the air, and catch them again on their fall; and to dance, not merely on the earth, but on the rope. The first, according to the historian Suetonius, who exhibited elephant rope dancers, was Galba at Rome. The manner of teaching them to dance on the ground was simple enough (simply music and a very hot floor); but we are not told how they were taught to skip the rope, or whether it was the tight or the slack rope, or how high the rope was. The silence of history on these points is fortunate for the dancers of the present day; since, but for this, their fame might have been utterly eclipsed. Elephants may, in the days of old Rome, have been taught to dance on a rope, but when was an elephant ever known to skip on a rope over the heads of an audience, or to caper amidst a blaze of fire fifty feet aloft in the air? What would Aristotle have thought of his dancing elephants if he had seen some of the elephants who perform to-day?
XXXVII
A PROVIDENTIAL SAFE CONDUCT
A traveller tells a singular anecdote of a lion, which he says was told to him by a very credible person. About the year 1614 or 1615, two Christian slaves at Morocco made their escape, travelling by night, and hiding themselves in the tops of trees during the day, their Arab pursuers often passing them by. One night, while travelling along, they were much astonished and alarmed to see a great lion close by them, walking when they walked and standing still when they did. Thinking this a safe conduct sent to them by Providence, they took courage and travelled in the daytime in company with the lion. The horsemen who had been sent in pursuit came up, and would have seized upon them, but the lion interposed, and they were allowed to pass on. Every day these poor slaves met with some one or other person who wanted to seize them, but the lion was their protector until they reached the sea coast in safety, when he left them.
