Los Angeles herald., 1891-10-19
LYING JOE.
HIS TALK ABOUT SOUTHERN CALL
FORNIA ELEPHANTS.
What He Knows About Elephant Farm
ing-He Tried it at Yuma, But Met
With Poor Success.

81 see that an elephant ranch is going
to be started in Southern California, "
said Lying Joe, as he laid down in dis
gust paper he was reading.
ut will never pay, and the men who
try elephant farming in this country
will find out this fact. 1 used to be a
menagerie farmer myself, and knew
what l am talking about. Ii they make
any money out of the business they will
have TO manage better than did.
my first experience was raising cam
els on the Colorado desert. From few
pairs l raised quite herd, and used to
sell them to miners and other people
who wanted to cross the desert. 1t was
a capital scheme, and l made money out
of it. Everybody knows the advantage
of travelling on camels on the great
waterless deserts of this region. No
small boy who ever gained admittance
to circus by carrying water to the
camel but knows their capacity for that
element. With its reservoir well filled
with water, any one of my camels was
good for a jaunt of 500 miles.
L
stuck to camels but, encouraged by
my success, 1 began the propagation OF
elephants from a defunct circus that
for while, and then got disguised with
grain and started to emigrate. had
them chained to my barn and did not
know that they were going until l saw
70 hor I'd ho CnI0rQdn
river. In five minutes the elephants
and barn had plunged into the river,
and were quietly floating toward the
gulf of California. At a point two miles
below Yuma thegbarn strucksa sandbar,
touch bottom with their feet, they were
powerless to continue their excursion.
For hours they tugged away at that
ponderous barn, but they could not
bulge it an inch. How to get the mass
i've brutes ashore puzzled me-. At last l
anchored a powerful MINDLESS on the
bank of the river, and hitching cable
to the elephants | brought them ashore.
While in the water, the one with the
five foot tusks got the toothache. You
can imagine what ten feet of toothache
would do with an animal that was
already dissatisfied with the country.
To make matters worse, the other one
was mass of rheumatism. To cure
over three yards of toothache and four
tons of rheumatism | saw it would take
all the patent medicine and medical
skill this side of the Rockies but had
to do it or lose my elephants, so l went
to work.
"By improvising pair of big forceps
which / hooked on to one of the tusks,
and attaching the instrument with
chain to the windlass, / succeeded in
extracting it; also the other one. But
rheumatism is not tangible disease,
hence could not pull it as l did the
tusks. The poor brute was getting
sicker, the five Indians he had just
succeeded in lifting with his trunk to
the happy hunting grounds not having
afforded him enough amusement to di-
vert his mind from his disease. After
feeding him all the rheumatic cures and
almanacs to be found in town he dis
gorged his soul out on the trackless
desert, and with it went the $4,000 had
invested in the animal.
cat the death of its mate the other
grew inconsolable, and in few weeks
passed into that great jungle where
there are no circus men to make them
afraid, and where eternal liberty is
theirs. Thus ended my experiment in
elephant farming, and give it to the
world that others may profit by it. Our
fecund soil and sunny sky will coax into
perfection any plant that grows, but in
the propagation of the elephant we can
never successfully compete with Africa
and India. - Ontario Observer.