Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-03-19

I Soon JACK came up n we nau Il Tepu-
lar wal dance round the carcass The
niger was Sent up the nearest cocoa
nut and we quafed a beaker to the
pleasant passage of Jumbo'ssoul to the
elephants heaven. Shooting an ele-
plant in a herd and shooting a rogue
elephant are two very different things.
In the first place. as | have said, you
are not allowed to shoot an elephant in
a herd under a penalty of two hundred
and fifty dollars. the Government using
all they can catch for the Public Works
Department. This is as it should be,
for. before the law was established,
there was Wholesale slaughter among
the noble beasts. 1t was nothing but
pot hunting. rs the hunter would lie
in wait where the herd went to water
and then pick them off at his leisure,
and, as Ceylon elephants have no tusks
it was done in mere wantonness.
Major Rogers, of the Ccylon Rifles,
was a famous elephant shot in his day.
and he was credited with having slain
with his own gun over twelve hundred
elephants. This / believe to be a we'll
authenticated fact. He once made a
bet that he would kill two elephants
with one shot. The way he did it was
to shoot the mother when the Young
elephant was sucking her, and the
mother falling on her young one
crushed it to death
''Elcphants arc caught IN what are
known us kraals. They are caught
either for use in the Public Works De-
partmcnt. for service in the native
temples. or for sale to some European
mcnagerie. When Il kraal is to be
formed word is sen to the native head
man of the village near where the
kraal is to be built, and he, in his turn,
sends out hundreds of beaters. When
the herd to be operated on is located
the heaters form asemi-circle and begin
driving the animal slowly toward the
kraal. At night they build watch fires,
and between them the native patrol,
armed with white wands, which are
quite sufficient to keep the elephants
from breaking through. They gradu-
ally work them up toward the kraal,
which is an open space in the Jungle
with some stout trees growing within
it. 1t is surrounded by a strong stock
AIDE and has only a narrow entrance.
Into this the herd is driven. The herd
is generally led by an old bull elephant,
and before any attempt to capture an
elephant is made this old gentleman
must be shot. When the Duke of Edin-
burgh visited the island a kraal was
gotten up for his especial benefit, and
II. r. II. entered the kraal to shoot the
bull, but he missed and the bull very
nearly did away with young Guelph.
In fact he was right on him when a
timely shot, fired by a native sitting
up a tree and armed with an old
flint musket, brought the bulls
career to an ond. The bull got rid of,
the next thing to do is to send in two
tame elephants, with their mahouts.
who single out the elephant to be capt
ured. The tame ones then 'scuddle'
up, n on each side, and profess great
friendship for their wild companion,
gradually pressing him or her closer and
closer until they have him fast. Then a
native slips in underneath and quickly
makes ropes fast to the wild ones legs.
and he is dragged by the tame cle-
plants to the nearest tree, where. after
being thrown to the ground, he is Sc
curely bound and left there to starve
for two or three days. He is then quite
tame, and when he rises up he Is no
longer monarch of the forest but Gle
plant No. 999 of the Public Works De-
partmcnt. or the great Jumbo ofatrav-
cling circus.
''The sagacity of elephants Is pro-
verbal, but few who have not person.
ally witnessed it can imagine how use
full they are to mar in such places rs
Ceylon. Without their aid it would
have been impossible for the Govern
ment to have covered the island, as it
has done, with Il splendid network of
roads and railways. In some places it
would have been impossible to have
transported machinery. and without
hosting machinery the great blocks of
stone used in the foundations and but
tresscs of bridges could not have been
m~ovcd-but here the elephant came
into play, and | have seen the
noble beast at work on the
roads, moving Il great block of
stone into position and standing
back and cycling it, and then giving it
Il gentle push, now on one side and now
Oh the other, until the stone was COR
rcctly placed. An officer Of the de-
partment told me that the most sa-
gacious thing he cvcr knew an cle-
plant to do was on one occasion when
they were unloading some steel piping
from a railway truck. The elephants
task was to carry the piping from be-
side the truck to Il little farther up the
track. This he did by Selling the
piping with his trunk. But it so hap
pcned that the piping had been oiled in
order to prevent it rusting, so that when
the elephant caught hold it slipped
from his grasp. He thought for Il mo-
ment, and then his c%lcphantine mind
solved the problem. Near the track
was a heap of sand; the animal kicked
the piping over to this with his foot,
and then rolled the piping backward
and forward in the sand. The oil made
the sand adhere, after which the ele-
phant took the piping up and marched
triumphantly off with it. Could a
human being east better? No Won
der the Government objects to such an
intelligent animal being indiscriminate-
ly slaughtered.
elephants are also in great demand
in Ceylon for service in the Buddhist
temples. Every temple has at least