servant of the elephant

rations of rice or wheaten flour cakes are given, as they should be, with fodder-stalks and leaves of various kinds. Rum, brandy, or arrack, mixed with ginger, cloves, pepper, and treacle, and made into a paste with flour, provide the elephant with a sort of tipsy-cake that cheers and comforts him when suffering from fatigue or cold. In the matter of food and stimulants, however, mahouts have no conscience, and steal without a qualm. Ages of slack-handed usage have settled that the and three generations of his family shall live on the beast he is paid to cherish. Allowances are given for flour, fire-wood, oil, and spices, but the elephant only gets a share in them, and not always that. So the worst ailment he has to face is semi-starvation, the lot of most elephants in captivity. The beast is in truth a noble anachronism, belonging to a young world time of denser foliage than this driedup age which packs hay in trusses and treasures ensilage in pits. But the thievish mahout is responsible for the worst of his belly-pinch. Yet elephant men are usually spoken of as models of devotion to their beasts. "They love 'em, sir,” said an English officer to me once. But that does not prevent their showing an indifference to their comfort, characteristic of all Orientals, whose talk often drips with sentiment, while their practice is of dry brutality. The acknowledged authorities on the subject, Mr. Sanderson and the late Mr. J. H. Steel, agree that mahouts invariably make the animals' comfort subservient to their own. Even the best of

them will seldom take the trouble to put their beasts under the shadow of a tree at mid-day. They also have the cruel Indian trick of securing the animals fore and aft in the most irksome manner possible. A rope or chain fastened to one foot and to a peg in the ground is sufficient restraint for most elephants, and allows them to turn to and from the sun and wind as they find agreeable. Mahouts

think nothing of securing an animal so that one side is exposed day and night to wind or rain. The practice of tight tying up is particularly repugnant to those who have a sympathetic knowledge of the restless, swaying, Johnsonian habit rooted in the beast's nature. The native servant himself keenly appreciates his liberty and is the most elusive creature alive, perpetually slinking from his duty into the jungles of the bazar. But when he ruleth he is a terrible despot.

Outside India it is believed that elephants are dying out of the land. The example of America, where the men and creatures natural to the soil have been exterminated to make room for a too triumphant civilisation, has taught the world a lesson of anxiety. But animal lovers may rest content, for the elephants of India, like the people, are increasing in numbers. They are carefully protected in their natural haunts, whence English officers of experience draw supplies for use with as much system and regularity as sheep are drafted from the hillside flock. The details of the Government kheddah or capturing arrangements are full of

interest, sport in its finest sense; nor is it easy to say whether the skill in woodcraft of the English directors, or the courage, endurance, and patience of the natives employed, are most admirable. Like a strong ass between two burdens, the British Government has been beaten with many staves, and also with fools' truncheons of pantomime paper, but, at least, it has tried to husband the resources of the country.

The thoughtful Germans are said to meditate the re-capture and domestication in their new Equatorial realm of the African elephant, free since the days of Hannibal. It is to be hoped this is true, for there is naught sillier under the sun than the slaughter which has hitherto been all that civilisation had to bestow on these blameless Ethiopians.

CHAPTER X

OF CAMELS

"When spring-time flushes the desert grass,
Our Kafilas wind through the Khyber pass.
Lean are the camels but fat the frails,
Light are the purses but heavy the bales,

As the snow-bound trade of the North comes down
To the market-square of Peshawar town.

"In a turquoise twilight crisp and chill,
A Kafila camped at the foot of the hill.
Then blue smoke haze of the cooking rose,
And tent-peg answered to hammer nose;
And the picketed ponies, shag and wild,
Strained at their ropes as the feed was piled;
And the bubbling camels beside the load
Sprawled for a furlong adown the road;

And the Persian pussy-cats, brought for sale,
Spat at the dogs from the camel-bale."

The ballad of the King's jest.-R. K.

HILE

some mahouts hint vaguely that the elephant came to India from the farther East, it is an accepted belief that the camel came from the West, i.e. from Arabia. No account is taken of the herds of wild camels seen on the high table-lands of Central Asia. So the

saying has it, "The camel let loose, goes westward," or "The camel is a good Mussulman, for when free, he runs towards Mecca." In default of proof that the beast really follows the setting sun, it may be suspected that Oriental fancy, always strong, has more play than Oriental observation, which is often weak. For the camel is a peculiarly Muhammadan creature both in his life of to-day and in his wonderful origin. It was on his back that the body of Shah Ali Shah was laid after death, and he was sent into the wilderness till the Angel Gabriel met him and, taking the rope, led him no man knows whither. Before that ghostly funeral the camel resembled a horse, but the Angel gave him a hump like the mountain into which he disappeared, and feet to spread on the yielding sand, with other anatomical peculiarities, all duly enumerated by good Mussulmans. This story is also told of Moses, the friend of God, or the converser with God, the place of whose sepulchre no man knoweth unto this day. Probably the saying has its origin in the propensity of the stupid camel to stray and lose itself, for it has none of the "homing" faculty so strongly developed in the horse. People who religiously face westward several times a day to pray naturally get an occidental twist in their minds. Nay, there are those who maintain that all the world. has this trick, and that, like Wordsworth's friends, we still go "stepping westward." South Australia has not yet discovered a Mecca twist in the thousands of camels it now owns.

T