derson requested all spectators, including the personal staff of the Prince, to raise the gate as the beaters were away on other work-to let out some more.

This was accordingly done, and amongst them was the huge female before mentioned, with a very young calf about three feet high. This little animal, about two months old, was a great amusement to us, and a very great nuisance to the workers inside. It got into everybody's way, and had to be kept at a distance with kicks and stones. It kept running about, squeaking and screaming, amongst the legs of koomkies and wild ones alike, and seemed to object strongly to the whole proceeding. At last its mother was noosed, with the greatest difficulty, and surrounded, but nothing in the world could persuade her to go towards the tree; so a large hawser was fastened to the hobbles, and a koomkie, taking the end of the hawser in its mouth, and twisting its trunk well round it, gave it a turn round a tree. while several others pushed this giant mother towards it, the little one roaring most piteously the whole time. At last, after great exertions, she was close enough to be secured by the hind legs. As soon as she was left alone, she struggled in the most marvellous manner to free herself. Sometimes she would lie down and roll from side to side; then she would stand upright on her hind legs; next she would throw herself down again, and stand fairly on her head, with her legs well away from the ground, all the time trying to free them from their shackles, searching the ground all round her the while for a purchase, and pulling with tremendous power, which would almost burst the thick ropes with which she was tied. She was more furious than ever if her calf left her side, when she would take up stones and earth and fling them all over herself in her agony. Her exertions lasted over an hour and a half, and it was a most piteous sight to watch the poor animal's attempts to lull the screaming of her calf. It was this gigantic female that, breaking through the line of the koomkies, tried to re-enter the inner enclosure, but being frightened back again by some of the spectators, swerved round, and passed within a few yards of the Prince, who had entered the enclosure with Mr. Sanderson. It was an anxious moment for us spectators as to what the Prince would do; for had he retreated

hastily and suddenly, the leviathan would surely have charged him. But the Prince took the matter very coolly, and showed as much presence of mind as if these scenes occurred daily with him. Needless to say, we all appreciated much his coolness and courage and the daring he displayed in entering the kheddah. This was the event that gave rise to the sensational telegrams and the many congrat ulatory messages from all parts of the world on his providential escape. Many were the ludicrous scenes we witnessed also. Once a mahout and a nooser were swept off their koomkie's back by an overhanging branch, and picking themselves up, much dazed by their tumble, they made as quickly as possible for what they thought at the first moment to be their elephant, and only discovered when trying to mount that it was one of the wild ones. Ah, how they ran as the brute turned slowly round! It reminded me very forcibly of the famous Blondin donkey when assuming its most threatening attitude.

Amongst the koomkies the greatest bully was a splendid fighting tusker, "Jung Behadur." With a prod of his powerful tusks he would soon send most of the captives in the direction iudicated by his mahout, and bully them into submission. They would by degrees resign themselves to their fate, even the great female at last, who looked the picture of disdain and comic grief, with her head and back covered with green fodder, which, instead of eating, she had sprinkled all over herself.

There was a young tusker who had watched all these proceedings with the greatest interest, and showed his displeasure at all that was going on by shambling round the inner enclosure, trumpeting loudly, and making every now and then endeavors to join his friends in the arena. At last, with mighty efforts, by butting the gate repeatedly, he got his head under it, and with all his colossal strength lifted the huge gate, weighing a couple of tons, and crept under. However, the results of his success proved very unsatisfactory for him, as, soon surrounded, he was quickly secured, and left to bemoan with sad demeanor this rash act that led him into so sad a predicament.

Night was now setting in, and we had to return. The jungle was waking up with its many mysterious sounds of the

night, and its inhabitants were beginning to move in search of prey; night-birds were fluttering silently about amongst the big trees, and the cry of the owl and nighthawk sounded with shrill distinctness in the gloom of the virgin forests. As we came near our tents, the lights of our torches frightened hundreds of flyingfoxes, whose wings sometimes measure, from tip to tip, forty-eight inches, who were holding high jinks in a majestic banian - tree, with its drooping suckers that form the new trunks, and which had already made it of a size large enough to shelter a battalion. With keen appetite we devoured our well-cooked dinner, and we sat till far into the night round the big log fire, sipping our brandy or whiskey paneeh, and many an old song, by some long forgotten, cropped up to remind us of days long gone by, and we wondered how on earth that fellow managed to pick it up, we naturally believing it to have been the sole property of a sma set that then made merry, and at whose festive gatherings it was always called for; and we sang it that night with all the warmth and fervor due to an old and valued friend.

"Another fine day," exclaims the funny man of the party next morning, as we again made ready for our ride to the kheddah. The days were indeed glorious there, as we were in such magnificent air, and had quite escaped the hot, closesmelling atmosphere of the lower lying country. Nothing more delightful can

be imagined than the early hours in these hills; they were bracing and cool, and we thoroughly enjoyed, as well as the Arab horses we rode, our canter over the springy turf of the paths. The day was spent again in tying up and other work necessary for the taming of the elephants. There were now two men appropriated to each elephant, who were busily building themselves huts close to their charges, and were feeding them, singing and talking to them the while, and by their constant presence they were accustoming the animals to their sight, and endeavoring to impress them with their friendliness. Troughs were made out of the hollowed trunks of date-trees, and pushed within their reach, and filled with water through bamboos. Some of the elephants would resent this attempt at intimacy immensely, and would kick or rush at their captor, while others would take no notice whatever, having resigned themselves completely to their fate; yet it would have inevitably ended in death, or, at any rate, broken bones, to have come within reach of their forelegs or trunks for a day or two. One or two absolutely refused to be quiet, and persistently kicked and tore at their bonds. Mr. Sanderson told me he had seen the sole of an elephant's foot come off in its entirety by its constant kicking; of course it had to be shot at once. The ropes or hawsers have to be changed after a day or two, and only one foot fastened, as by constant dragging they wear sores, and these have

to be carefully attended to, as otherwise they will soon fill with maggots and become very troublesome. The elephants will blow sand upon these wounds to keep off the flies, and this makes the rubbing of the ropes still worse. The mahouts use margosa oil, and apply it with a long mop. A few of the oldest elephants had to be shot, as it is impossible to tame those of great age, and if turned out into the forest again they become very vicious, and by remaining solitary would develop into the much - dreaded "rogue."

All shooting is done now with a fourbore, and the shot must be in the right place. The elephant's brain is a very small one, and protected with a very thick bone, so a rifle with great smashing power must be used. Poor Walter Ingram, the youngest son of the late Mr. Herbert Ingram, the originator and proprietor of the Illustrated London News, had to pay with his life for attempting to shoot one of these animals with a .450 Express. He was, in 1888, on a shooting trip with some friends in Somâli Land, East Africa, and having shot a fine tusker himself the day before, lent his four-bore to his friend to give him a chance. He rode out, attended by a few blacks, armed with his Express, and soon came across a very big brute with splendid tusks that he longed to secure. He rode close up to him and fired at his head; but the solid, hardened bullets of his .450 bore, with its hundred and twentyfive grains of powder, simply flattened against the bone. He kept on firing both barrels, and galloping out of the elephant's reach to reload, and so fired sixteen shots into him. After the last of these shots, the pony suddenly refused to move, and seemed paralyzed with fear by the repeated and thundering charges of the brute. The elephant immediately rushed up, and before Ingram could think what to do, he was whisked off his

saddle, his brains dashed out against a tree, and his body trampled fairly into a jelly.

The elephant is now strictly preserved everywhere in India and Ceylon, and permission to shoot one is only given to a very few favored ones. If this were not done, they would by this time have entirely ceased to exist. Now they are only found in a wild state in India proper, in the north in Nepaul and Assam, in the south in Mysore, and a few in Ceylon. The capture in the last-named place was in 1863 as many as a hundred and seventy-three, but has dwindled down to a couple; so now the shooting and capture are entirely prohibited, and it is to be hoped that in a few years they will again roam about the forests of this little island in respectable numbers.

The great fair in India for the sale of elephants is held annually at Sonepoor, on the Ganges, at the time that hundreds of thousands of pilgrims assemble there to worship at the shrine of Siva and to bathe in the sacred river when the moon is full in the months of October and November. The same kind of thieving and swindling goes on amongst the elephantdealers as amongst the horsy fraternity.

LEADING HOME THE CAPTIVES.

Elephants are brought here from a long distance, some even from Burmah and Siam. The number for sale seems to decrease every year, and the prices rise enormously in consequence. Cabool merchants are the principal purchasers of them in the distant provinces, and from there they are taken for their long, weary march to India.

The prices realized by Mr. Sanderson vary, according to the age and temper of the captive, from about £150 to £400, or about $750 to $2000. Elephants are bought by the natives for display, and no animal looks so well in a rôle for a tomahsha; the pompous pace of a procession suits him to perfection; but for this only male elephants are used, and then only tuskers, as they alone seem worthy to carry the native nobles; and the muckna, or tuskless male, is sent with the females to do work, such as carrying baggage, wood, or fodder, and, of course, is of immense value for hunting purposes. The elephant is not a desirable means of travelling along high roads, but in jungly and difficult country, where you could not get through with a horse, he is wonderfully quick and clever in getting over and through thick places. Sanderson tells me he has ridden them as small as thirteen hands with a soft pad and stirrups, and has found them the most pleasant of mounts; they would easily keep up with a man running at a great pace. For tiger-shooting he is, of course, of the greatest use, and although naturally of a very timid disposition, the mahout on his neck and the hunter on his back in the howdah will give him confidence, and he will, with very few exceptions indeed, never refuse to face the fiercest of tigers.

The captured elephants were constantly fed. They do not refuse food from the very first; in fact, a wild one is constantly feeding, it being a habit of his to be always browsing, as he moves through the jungle, on the young shoots of bamboo and other trees. After a day or two they get quite accustomed to the men, and will take from their hands pieces of sugar-cane and fruit. The men will gradually approach them, and after a while put food into their mouths, which they prefer to taking it in with their trunks; they then can pat and caress them, and after many such little attentions a bond of friendship seems to get cemented between them, and sometimes after five or

six days the captive can be marched off between two tame ones to the nearest station. A large animal will measure from nine to ten feet in height at the shoulder, and from twenty-five to twentyeight from the tip of the trunk to the end of the tail. His tusks will weigh from thirty-five to forty-five pounds each, and be about five or six feet long when taken out of the bone, showing out of the gum two or three feet. They live to a great age, and have been known to have left a hundred years far behind them. The African elephant also attains a great age, and his height, in both sexes, is about one foot more than his Indian brother, but it is almost an impossibility to tame him. The Maharajah of Mysore possess

es an elephant captured in Coorg in 1805, when a calf of three years, and at the present moment he is still in good working order, and even now does not present a particularly aged appearance, although his sunken temples and prominent bones show that old age is at last beginning to make itself visible. One must take into consideration, too, that their life in captivity is much harder and more exposed to the heat, and that often they are underfed. All those used in the Indian army as draught animals in the artillery or commissariat, or as baggage animals in the transport department, are very carefully attended to, and in every way treated with the greatest consideration. Their keep is rather expensive, being about thirty rupees, or seventeen dollars, a day, including, of course, the wages of their mahout and grass-cutter. They are fed principally on unhusked rice and grass; of the former they get about two hundred and fifty pounds and of the latter about four hundred pounds per diem. The very large female eats, after the first day or two, about seven hundred and fifty pounds of green fodder in eighteen hours; this is exceeded often by large tuskers, so that eight hundred pounds is about the right amount to be placed before a full-grown elephant, with a margin to allow for waste. As a good load for an elephant is about eight hundred pounds, it will be seen that the amount he will eat per day will be as much as he can carry, and this will also be the right proportion for the smaller ones.

The next day we all divided into different parties, some to revisit the kheddah, others on independent expeditions.