A sentinel at the Menagerie in Paris, used often to desire the visitors not to give the elephants any thing to eat. This admonition was particularly disagreeable to the female elephant, and she took a great dislike to the sentinel. She had several times endeavoured to make him desist from interfering, by squirting water over his head, but without effect. One day, when several persons came to see these animals, one of them offered a piece of bread to the female, which being perceived by the sentinel, just as he was opening his mouth to repeat his usual admonition, the elephant stepped opposite to him, and threw a large quantity of water into his face. This excited the laughter of all the by-standers; but the sentinel coolly wiped his face, placed himself a little on one side, and was as usual very vigilant. Not long after he again found occasion to repeat his former admonition to the spectators; but scarcely had he done it when the elephant tore his musket out of his hand, wound her trunk round it, trod upon it, and did not deliver it again to him till after she had twisted it completely into the form of a screw.
A person resident in Ceylon, near a place where elephants were daily led to water, often used to sit at the door of his house, and occasionally to give to one of these animals some fig-leaves, a food to which elephants are very partial. Once he took it into his head to play the elephant a trick. He wrapped a stone round with fig-leaves, and said to the cornack (the keeper of the elephants) “This time I will give him a stone to eat, and see how it will agree with him.” The cornack answered, “that the elephant would not be such a fool as to swallow the stone.” The man, however, reached the stone to the elephant, who taking it with his trunk applied it to his mouth, and immediately let it fall to the ground. “You see,” said the cornack, “that I was right.” Saying these words, he drove away his elephants, and after having watered them, was conducting them again to their stable. The man who had played the elephant the trick with the stone was still sitting at his door, when, before he was aware, the animal made at him, threw his trunk round him, and dashing him to the ground trampled him immediately to death.
All Naples, says Sonnini, in one of his notes to Buffon’s “Natural History,” has witnessed the docility and sagacity of an elephant that belonged to the king. He afforded great assistance to the masons that were at work upon the palace, by reaching them the water they required, which he fetched in large copper vessels from a neighbouring well. He had observed that these vessels were carried to the brazier’s when they wanted any repair. Observing, therefore, one day that the water ran out at the bottom of one of them, he carried it of his own accord to the brazier, and having waited while it was repairing, received it again from him, and returned to his work. This elephant used to go about the streets of Naples without ever injuring any one: he was fond of playing with children, whom he took up with his trunk, placed them on his back, and set them down again on the ground without their ever receiving the smallest hurt.
There is a remarkable instance of an elephant’s attachment to a very young child. The animal was never happy but when it was near him: the nurse used, therefore, very frequently to take the child in its cradle, and place it between his feet, and this he became at length so accustomed to, that he would never eat his food except when it was present. When the child slept he used to drive off the flies with his proboscis, and when it cried he would move the cradle backward and forward, and thus again rock it to sleep.
Ælian relates that a man of rank in India, having very carefully trained up a female elephant, used daily to ride upon her, and gave her many proofs of his attachment to her. The king of the country, who had heard of the extraordinary gentleness and capacity of this animal, demanded her of her owner; but he, unwilling to part with his favourite, fled with her to the mountains. By order of the king he was pursued, and the soldiers that were sent after him having overtaken him when he was at the top of a steep hill, he defended himself by throwing stones at them, in which he was faithfully assisted by the elephant, who had learnt to throw stones with great dexterity. At length, however, the soldiers gained the summit of the hill, and were about to seize the fugitive, when the elephant rushed amongst them with the utmost fury, trampled some of them to death, dashed others to the ground with her trunk, and put the rest to flight. She then placed her master, who was wounded in the contest, upon her back, and conveyed him to a place of security. There are numerous well-attested anecdotes of similar instances of the affection of elephants towards their owners.