The Greeley tribune., 1908-05-07
TANNING ELEPHANTS.
'hey Are sinsularIy Hslplsss and
Fearful For Such Great An,r,,.

They Are sinsuIary Hslpl... and
Fearful For Such Great Animals.
10 see the working elephant at
his best one must go to Burma.
where the teak timber trade, worth
millions of dollars u year, is the sta
pie industry. Teak, us every one
knows, Is u very valuable wood.
quite equal to mahogany, and much
used in expensive furniture and fit
tings. There are in Burma vast
forests, thousands of square miles
in extent, and these are leased by
the Indian government to private
corporations. many of which EN-
ploy over thousand elephants,
each one of them worth at least
5000 rupees, or 1865. These ele
plants are renewed from the wild
herds as occasion demands. But
the Indian government strictly pro-
tccts every elephant between the
Himalayas and Cape Cormorin, and
not one may be shot save by special
license and when it is clearly shown
he is rogue" or outcast from the
herd and on that account likely to
become a serious menace to the vii
layers.
The Indian government itself un-
dertakes the trapping of the wild
elephants through its forest depart
ment. In the old days this was
done by digging pits in the jungle
and covering them lightly with
twigs, o.anches and grass. But for
one elephant successfully taken by
this method at least twenty were
manned or destroyed. and now the
"kheddah" system is in vogue. The
kheddah is simply an immense
inclosure made with the trunks OF
trees and with V shaped entrance.
On a day prearranged thousands Of
beaters under the supervision Of
white shikaris, or hunters, drive the
wild herds from their feeding
grounds toward the kheddah, and
at last. with a thunder that shakes
the ground, many hundreds of the
monsters rush. screaming and
trumpeting, into the great inclosure
Next day expert mahouts, or driv-
ers, mounted upon tame working
tuskers. enter the kheddah and be-
gin to make friends with the cap
tives. The work of tanning these
wild elephants is astonishingly SIM
pie. 1t is also comic to witness, be-
cause so well trained are the tame
decoys that should the prisoners
misbchave themselves they are very
drastically corrected by the tusks
of their taskmasters. In week
or so each captive is led forth be-
tween two tame elephants, and his
education is very nearly complete.
Many elephants are shipped from
India proper up to Moulmeln and
Burma in ships specially built for
| the purpose. | have seen as many
as l20 full grown elephants being
! put on board one of these curious
liners. They are lifted by a special
shng harness, attached to cables
and a powerful crane.
1t is pitiful to see the terror Of
the enormous brutes dangling help
lessly in midair, and when one re
alizes what agonies they suffer at
the mere sight of Il mouse one un-
derstands their dread of beng
swung in midair, The elephant la
borers are fully grown at twenty
five years, and then they do their
best work, travelling faster than the
older ones. For nearly fifteen
wears they continue to increase IN
weight, and their experienced
mahouts are able to tell their age
at glance by the shape of their
ears. AS workers they are both
quiet and swift. have seen Il
Rangoon elephant outrun fast
horse for short distance. Oddly
enough, they cannot jump in the
least, and a deep ditch only seven
feet wide is to them quite impassa-
BILE. Nearsighted they are too. But
to make up for this their sense OF
smell is little short of miraculous
". G. Fitzgerald in st. Nicholas.