The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects.

Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    102/412 (page 92)
    “ When merchants bring elephants to any place for sale, ’tis a pleasant sight to see them go along. There are old and young together, and when the old are gone by, the children run after the little ones, and leap upon their backs, giving them something to eat; but perceiving their dams are gone forward, they throw the children otf, without hurting them, and double their pace*.” The young elephants which are reared in our Indian settlements are principally produced by the females that are taken wild at the time they are in calf. It does not appear that there is any diffi- culty in the education of these little ones, who are accustomed to a domestic state from their birth ; but that they are gradually accustomed to bear burthens, and to become obedient to the commands of their keepers. In the kingdom of Ava, where the female elephants belonging to the king are in a state of half wildness, there is considerable trouble in reducing the young ones to submission. Mr. Crawfurd, who was the British envoy to the court of Ava in 1827, has given an account of this curious operation : “ The young male elephants are weaned at three years old,—that is to say, they are then separated from their dams, and broken in,—a process which appears to be nearly as tedious and difficult as that of breaking in a full-grown elephant taken in the forest. A singular ceremony was performed before this process commenced, which deserves mention:— It consisted of an invocation to the Nat Udin-main-so, the genius of elephant hunting. Between the walls of the town and an artificial mount planted with trees, and raised upon a ledge of rocks, jetting into the Irawadi, there is a small elephant paddock, con« sisting of a single square palisade having no gates. * Tavernier’s Travels, part ii. book 1.