FIRST STEPS IN THE EDUCATION OF A YOUNGSTER IN THE INNER PEN
The attachment the elephant has for his keeper is something marvelous. Almost incredible accounts are told of their devotion. Perhaps this is due to the inseparable life that the mahout and his elephant lead, for the keeper and his charge are constantly together. Always the same hand feeds and tends him, always the same voice commands him, whether at work in the lumber-yards, charging through the jungle at a round-up, or moving slowly in some royal procession. If by any chance a mahout becomes too ill to work or dies, there is often the greatest difficulty to induce the elephant to accept a new master, and it is very seldom that the new man can gain the complete mastery over the brute that its original trainer had.
There is a wrong impression prevalent that the Siamese regard the white elephant as a deity. That they hold it in special regard is true, for each Buddha, in passing through a series of transmigrations, is supposed to have inhabited the body of some white animal, either a monkey, a dove, or an elephant; and therefore a white animal is yet worshiped as having at some time been the superior of man.
BY CHARLES MOSER
FROM time immemorial, Eastern princes have captured wild elephants by driving them into a stockade and noosing them from the backs of tamed beasts. It has been virtually the only means of replenishing their stables, for elephants in captivity do not breed well. Nevertheless, elephant kraals, the common name from Jeypore to Siam, have always been events of great interest and excitement. The enormous size of the game, its inevitable danger, and the wonderful exhibition of brute intelligence often seen, account for the fascination of the sport.