NINETY miles from the mouth of the Menam River lies the city of Ayuthia, the old capital of Siam. The jungle has taken back to itself miles of its ancient grandeur, and temples, palaces, and brick roadways lie crumbling and half buried in the rank luxuriance of the tropical forest. To the north, east, and west, except on the very banks of the river, the country stretches out in one unbroken line of wilderness, and this primeval jungle-land forms the great elephant preserve of the king. Here the huge herds wander in absolute freedom, making unmolested raids upon the paddy-fields and palm-orchards of the river villages, lords of the land except in the event of a great “round-up,” when the royal mahouts, mounted on tame tuskers, form in an immense circle and slowly drive one or more herds steadily toward the kraal at Ayuthia.
With the exception on some few miles of roadways in Bangkok, Siam is destitute of the ordinary modes of communication, and the entire transportation of the country is by rivers and canals or by elephants. All the great up-country produce is packed by them through the jungle to the waterways, over roads made by themselves and quite impassable for any other beast of burden. Therefore the capture of young tuskers to be tamed and trained for this work forms, perhaps, the event of the year to the natives.
The kraal at Ayuthia is four hundred feet square, formed of teak-wood logs, set about two feet apart and fifteen feet high, bound strongly with iron and forming a barrier which is seldom broken even by the strongest tuskers. The entrance is at the end immediately adjoining the jungle, and two lines of stockade extend in the shape of a fan a mile or more into the forest. In the center of the paddock is a small square of ten feet, built in the same way as the outer barrier, and used as a place of refuge for the natives employed in cutting-out and tying up the captives.
In the round-up that we had the good fortune to see there were exactly two hundred and thirteen wild elephants brought in. Thirty trained mounts, each with his two mahouts, together with hundreds of natives on foot, had been at work for two or more weeks getting this herd together, and safely into the kraal. The driving of this huge mass of beasts day after day until finally the last rush is made and the herd is well inside the fan, requires more nerve, patience, and skill than perhaps any other form of capture in the world. It is not unusual that many men are killed in this work, for if once the herd gets scent of danger, nothing can withstand their fearful charge. While there is no animal in which docility and kindness are more strongly marked than in the elephant, let him once become wicked, or “rogue,” as a man-killer is called, and there is no other beast which shows equal ferocity and cruelty, combined with an absolutely devilish cunning.
The first signs of the approaching herd were a great cloud of dust and a dull roar like a heavy freight-train, making the ground fairly tremble; and then out of the mist came the huge beasts, pushing and fighting as they were packed closer in the converging fan, and making the air ring with their shrill trumpetings.
The large swinging beams at the entrance were pulled aside, and in they came with a rush, by twos and threes, stopping suddenly, and looking about in a dazed way at the yelling crowd of natives perched out of danger high on the walls beyond the stockade. When the whole herd was in and the paddock closed, they were left to themselves for a time before the real work of the day, from a spectator’s point of view at least, began.
Half-tone plate engraved by S. Davis
A ROUND-UP FESTIVAL—TWO HUNDRED ELEPHANTS IN THE OUTER PEN