Title Image for Noosing Wild Elephants

BY CHARLES MOSER

Lodge

FROM time immemorial, Eastern princes have captured wild elephants by driving them into a stockade and noosing them from the backs of tamed beasts. It has been virtually the only means of replenishing their stables, for elephants in captivity do not breed well. Nevertheless, elephant kraals, the common name from Jeypore to Siam, have always been events of great interest and excitement. The enormous size of the game, its inevitable danger, and the wonderful exhibition of brute intelligence often seen, account for the fascination of the sport.

Kraals are usually conducted by the minor prince or chieftain who holds in feudal tenure the villages of the district in which the kraal is held; and it was our privilege to be at the one last mentioned as the guests of Ratemahatmeya Meduanwella, lord of the villages of Panamure and Wellawe, in the province of Sabaramamuwa.

We left Colombo at sunrise in a motor-car (I can never get over that; I am still near enough to my boyhood’s dreaming over the pages of old Sir Samuel Baker not to acceptthat!) and swept along the muddy Kelani, alive in the early morning withcadjanboats and women bathing. It is a lovely, undulating valley; we saw coolies treading out the grain in the paddy-fields,sveltearecas and talipot-palms smoking with dew, low hills thickly feathered with the dark-green plumage of young rubber-trees, and bevies of brown girls plucking leaves among the sparse tea-bushes. By nine o’clock we had reached the rest-house at Ratnapura, nestled close by Kelani’s sullen lip, and were calling loudly for breakfast. The most striking ornament in the dining-room was a placard advertising American buckwheat cakes, and our roving eye fell upon a two-months’-old copy of the Kansas City “Star,” sure signs of the miracle of mere living in our times. Ratnapura is the capital of the famous gem district, and our host, a wily Cingalese with a prodigious tortoise-shell comb in his back hair, showed us some rough stones—rubies, sapphires, and cats’-eyes—which he had “found,” and would part with as a very special favor.

At noon we left the motor-car and took to the jungle on foot. Our route lay for eight miles along a path cut and burned through the densest jungle specially for this occasion, and toward dusk we came at last, drenched, yet thirsty, through dim, green aisles of tall ebony-and satinwood-trees, to a wide meadow and the dark, swift stream that flows through it along the hem of Panamure. We saw a man far up in a giant palm-tree, clinging to the bole with his naked feet, cutting branches; then a great gaunt beast in the jungle twilight, feeding on the white, succulent trunks of banana-trees; and the pathetic figure of a baby elephant, captured only the week before, tugging hopelessly, but incessantly, at his ankle-ropes, and we knew that we were near the scene of the kraal. We crossed the stream on a bridge half crushed in by ponderous, pachydermous feet, and at once found ourselves among lines of bare brown men squatting under palm-leaf shelters. These were the beaters surrounding thewild herds. The long line of their fires dotted the dusk of the jungle, and the smell of wet wood smoke, flavored with the odors from their cooking-pots, made a kind of wild incense, strangely grateful and reminiscent to our civilized nostrils. At a distance an occasional faint snort, or the soft crackling of undergrowth followed by the thudding of some distant beater’s drum, betrayed the locality where the quarry fed uneasily.

The plan and strategy of an elephant kraal is very simple. A wooded country, over which elephants rove and through which a suitable stream flows, is selected. A stockade from twelve to sixteen feet in height, and inclosing part of the stream and from four to six acres of jungle, is constructed of stout logs lashed together with rattan withes. At one side of the inclosure is a gate, with a V-shaped approach leading to it. When the stockade has been completed, the villagers arm themselves with guns, spears, tom-toms, old pots, horns—anything that will make a noise—and pour into the jungle to beat up the wild herds. They spread out in a circle, sometimes twenty-five miles long, but gradually lessening as the herds are driven nearer the stockade. The main object is to keep the elephants from reaching water except by entering the inclosure, and sometimes this is very difficult. Fires are kept alight at distances of a few feet; and sometimes at night, when the huge beasts charge in a body, the din of drums, bells, shouts, and horns is enough to daunt bolder spirits than the jungle denizens. Frequently a herd succeeds in breaking through and making its escape, occasionally not without a heavy loss to the enemy; but usually after being kept from water for three or four days their terrible thirst drives the poor creatures to the water within the stockade, and the gate closes forever between them and the dear free life of their native jungle.

THE LORD OF THE KRAAL AND HIS HEIR

Panamure is a lovely little village, idling along the banks of its streamlet and cuddled in between two tall and softly wooded peaks as delicately rounded as the breasts of a woman. Its daughters are tender-eyed and domestic, performing the family washing at the front gate, while the men are of mild manner and much given to the business of gentling noosed elephants. They are Buddhists, but their real god is the snowy-bearded old Ratemahatmeya, who is also their father, lord of their lands, and of every grain of rice that goes into their mouths.

We found the old gentleman waiting for us at the “hotel.” He had laid aside the garments of his high estate and put on the long-tailed shirt of the coolie, as being more in keeping with one who had watched five nights in the jungle; but for all that he was a memorable figure, with his small, sharp nose and eyes like those of a sparrow-hawk, his patriarchal beard and imperious voice. Even more distinguished-looking was his brother-in-law, the imperturbable Kalawane. Clad to lead the beaters in nothing but a breech-clout and his shining black beard, he seemed at that moment to have stepped out of the pages of Kipling especially for this occasion.

NATIVE BEATERS IN CAMP

READY TO PROD THE ELEPHANTS

NATIVES BINDING A WILD ELEPHANT TO A TREE

TWO TAME ELEPHANTS CAJOLING A WILD SISTER

“HE SCREAMED, FROTHED, AND LUNGED AGAINST HIS FETTERS”❏LARGER IMAGE

“HE SCREAMED, FROTHED, AND LUNGED AGAINST HIS FETTERS”

❏LARGER IMAGE

They took us to get a first glimpse of the stockade in the now fast-dying light. It was the old Ratemahatmeya’s fourteenth kraal, he told us, and he had had 2500 villagers out for many days. He hoped to catch thirty or forty elephants, but some might escape through the line of beaters that night, as the elephants were desperate and the beaters nearly exhausted. Even as he talked there were sounds of trampling and crashing of underbrush a few yards to our right, and the whole line of beaters rushed toward the spot, beating brass pots and yelling. After torches had been thrown, the crashing ceased suddenly, and not another sound was heard. Not a line of living form could be seen; not even a leaf stirred, but one had the most vivid sense that all about us the jungle was permeated with mysterious forces, tremendous, yet impalpable.

The stockade itself was worth a fortune, could it have been brought to market. It was constructed of peeled ebony and satinwood logs, many from twenty to thirty feet long and as thick as a man’s body. Seven hundred and fifty coolies had spent three weeks in building it, sinking the upright logs ten feet into the earth and with rattan thongs lashing to them the horizontal logs at three-foot intervals. It looked enormously strong and resistant. Overlooking the stockade on three sides, towers had been built from which the Ratemahatmeya and his principal guests were to view the grand spectacle of noosing and tying up the kraaled elephants.

Dinner in the hotel that night was eaten on bare boards, within gunny-sack walls, and with damp earth underfoot. As we sat about the boards afterward, in bare feet and pajamas, a small, breathless figure dashed up and flung his torch of dried stalks down before us. Some elephants had entered the kraal and the gate had been closed behind them! It was not a moment for reflection. Away we ran through the black night, barefooted and pajama-clad, unmindful of thorns, and deadly cobras, perhaps, lying in wait along the path. Guided by the weird little figure with his torch, who was immensely proud to have been the bearer of great tidings, we reached the stockade and found the Ratemahatmeya seated on a log rocking himself in glee. Ten elephants, led by a furious old cow, he explained, had been trapped. To-morrow the rest of the herd would be caught. In this, however, he proved a bad prophet, for during the night the elephants outside the kraal broke through the beaters’ lines and escaped.

Around the circle of the stockade they were now lighting hundreds of fires. Flames and smoke shot up half-way to the tops of the trees, and the whole jungle was an endless moving parade of black shadows. Scores of men lined the barricade, their bodies dripping sweat, points of light flashing from their sharpened spear-heads. The business was eery and serious. Twice the fear-maddened animals had charged the stockade and twice had been driven back with spear-thrusts and firebrands. Now they were hiding somewhere in the gulf of blackness beyond the fires, as silent as the dark, plotting, full of hatred, and terribly dangerous.

We went back to the hotel and to a sleep of troubled dreams. There is no doubt that the presence of wild elephants in the neighborhood of one’s slumbers produces a curious impression. Some might even call it “funk.” Throughout the night the shouting of the beaters and the muffled trumpetings of giants in distress told how mighty Hathi and his sons struggled to break through the cordon of their enemies. And when morning came we knew from the scattered fire-lines that the lords of the jungle had bravely won their freedom. The Ratemahatmeya held a sunrise court-martial over it, but no one knew anything. He was forced to content himself with the ten animals safe within the kraal.

Early as we were at the stockade, the village, bringing its breakfast in freshkosleaves and gourds, was there before us. A thin stream of sunlight, penetrating the kraal, revealed the captured herd standing together in the deep shadows beneath a giant unga-tree, brooding and sinister, their alinement as perfect as that of a line of infantry. They were absolutely motionless, yet somehow conveyed the impression of hair-trigger alertness. We could count two half-grown bulls, two yearling calves, and a two-year-old. The other five were cows. There were no tuskers among them, but it soon became evident that an old cow, which always took her position on the extreme right, was “boss” of the herd. The moment shecocked her ears the others stiffened their tails and gathered themselves to charge.

We had not long to wait for the first charge in daylight. Ratemahatmeya Kalawane came upon the scene riding his brother-in-law’s finest decoy, a magnificent brute in the prime of his vigor and intelligence. Apparently without a command, the big elephant majestically approached the stockade at a point nearest the beleaguered herd, lifted his trunk over the barricade and gave the call of his kind. The whole herd at once swung toward him, as if in obedience to the voice of a friend. They had covered barely twenty paces, however, when suspicion entered the mind of the old cow. At her signal they all paused, waving their trunks uncertainly. One of the village headmen thought this an auspicious moment to step through the stockade for a clearer view. Instantly the old cow’s tail shot into the air as stiff as a rod, and she charged with the speed of an express-train, the others following her, but half-heartedly. A volley of yells from the spearmen and beaters greeted her as she came, but she struck the stockade with a tremendous impact, rocking the piles in their sockets and making the earth tremble. The beaters stood fearlessly to their work, however, and a score of spear-thrusts from the heavy twelve-foot staves sent her back, sullen and bloody. The others, seeing their leader’s discomfiture, contemptuously turned their backs to the enemy and continued their interrupted coquetting with the decoy elephant.

But those trapped cows, though frightened and no doubt bewildered beyond anything in their experience, were not foolish. The big, handsome bull, sent out to court and mollify them, continued his outrageous attempts at flirtation through the interstices of the stockade all in vain. Not that they were not flattered, perhaps, by his attentions, for they paralleled his amiable saunterings up and down the barricade for an hour, but always at the safe distance of a hundred yards; ten pairs of little, bright, malicious eyes the while keeping watch of his every movement and of every movement inside the kraal. Satisfied at last of his treacherous intentions, and, perhaps, tiring of the sport, they ignored him altogether and turned their energies again toward their human foes.

The rest of the morning was given to beating back charge after charge. The old cow, especially, was a veritable demon in temper and courage. Sometimes she charged alone, her calf bellowing and coughing his ridiculous rage in her wake. Sometimes, with one impulse, the whole herd charged with her, as if at a preconcerted signal. Once, indeed, she nearly got our photographer. The elephants were standing quiet for the moment, a hundred yards away, trunks down and slack, apparently oblivious to their enemies. A fugitive patch of sunlight, finely illuminating their heads, tempted the camera man to advance a few steps inside the gate in the hope of obtaining a picture. The next instant the whole herd was almost upon him. He had barely time to fling himself headlong between the posts when the old cow, in the lead, crashed against the gate. Another yard, and she would have got him. It took half an hour and two brandy sodas to coax his nerve back, but the imperturbable Kalawane, who had been lying sound asleep beneath the gate timbers till the crash awakened him, merely raised himself long enough to curse camera man, elephants, and beaters fluently and indiscriminately, and then resumed his nap.

I had often heard of the speed of an elephant’s charge, and had marveled without enlightenment. I had even scoffed, because those who told of it never were able to explain it. Their descriptions seemed to me the result of “nerves,” justifying effect by cause. Now that I have seen it for myself, I marvel no more, but am simply dazed. You cannot explain the charge because you do not really see him make it. One instant he is standing over there, a hundred yards away, as motionless as the tree-trunks; at the end of that same instant he is upon you, overwhelming, monstrous, like a mountain falling upon you. And you did not even see him start!

I have a theory about it. An elephant’s loose skin is a sort of bag that conceals the most flexible and finely articulated set of muscles in the animal kingdom. He has no bulge of muscles anywhere. They are all as smooth and flat as ribbons, as elastic as rubber, tempered like steel wire. Wherefore he can wheel that vast bulk of his instantly and in a space the size of a tea-table. He can hurl the whole four or fivetons of him into action with a single impulse and strike his top speed in a single stride. Place an enemy in front of him, and I believe he can run ten yards or two hundred from a standing start faster than any other creature on legs.

Meantime, the decoys to be used for the noosing in the afternoon had come up from their teak-piling duties in the low country. Seven gigantic beasts, far larger than the captured ones, they moved like conquerors, majestic and grand. It was not to be comprehended that these colossi, the mightiest of the earth’s creatures, were willing servants of those pygmies astride their necks. Yet all through the subsequent proceedings the mahout’s word was law, and I never once saw a tame elephant pricked with the ankus. This is the more remarkable when it is understood that with one exception they had all been wild elephants fewer than ten years before.

After they had been bathed and scraped and holystoned till their hides shone like polished slate, the decoys were led before the Ratemahatmeya to receive the ceremonial anointment with oil and make their salaams. As the great beasts fell on their knees before the old man and made their dumb, strange genuflections of obeisance, my eyes were filled with a picture of the galleries of old Rome and of the German gladiators stooped before some palsied Cæsar, and through my brain pulsed again the echo of their grand and solemn valedictory.

But it was two o’clock, and the ladies of the Ratemahatmeya’s family were in the tower, the village was in the tree-tops, or chattering like schools of monkeys in the undergrowth, and all was ready for the great spectacle of the kraal, the contests in the arena. Kalawane, on the largest elephant, headed the procession of the seven decoys, followed by a small army of spearmen and elephant shikarees, carrying ropes. Each of the decoys bore on his back a mahout and a nooser, the latter armed with a coil of rope noosed at one end and attached at the other to a stout collar around the decoy’s neck.

For some time before the procession set out for the kraal gate the wild herd had been clustered in thick cover on the far side of the stream from the Ratemahatmeya’s tower. As we could neither see nor hear anything of them, Ricalton and I ran around the stockade to a point nearest them and no more than forty yards from the little hillock on which they stood. We could hear the decoys pulling down the gate far away on the other side, and it was evident that the wild herd was quite as plainly aware that something new and decisive in their affairs was about to occur. They stood stone-still, indifferent to our presence, their eyes alert, but their heads a little drooping. Nothing but actual speech could have better expressed that, though sore perplexed, theyall butunderstood. As for us, we were so lost in the contemplation of them in this greatest moment of their lives that we did not hear the approach of the decoys, and they, if they heard it, gave no sign.

Suddenly we heard the sharp crackle of voices—Kalawane’s and the mahouts’—shouting, “Yunga! Yunga! Yunga!” (“Charge! Charge! Charge!”) and saw the decoys swiftly looming through the underbrush. The wild ones saw them at the same time, and for just a moment the whole herd, trunks uplifted in welcome, swung forward to meet them. The next instant they realized their mistake, turned tail, and went crashing down the slope in a panic. After them came the whole band of decoys, spearmen, and noosers barking a staccato chorus that set the blood tingling all over me. I never have had such a feeling. It was a little like the first shock of a shower-bath on a frosty morning. I found myself plunging knee-deep through the stream in the wake of the rushing animals, with Ricalton, sixty-six years old and as white as Mount Hood, not a foot behind me.

On the other bank the decoys overtook their quarry, and two big bulls separated one of the yearlings from his mother for the fraction of a second—just time enough for a nooser to drop off behind and slip the loop around his right hind leg. He suddenly found himself being dragged backward on his fore legs and belly, and such squalling never was heard. At first his frantic mother fought furiously to reach him, but two powerful bulls so unceremoniously butted her about that she gave up and rushed off for help; for I never will believe that she deserted him. The little fellow was dragged and butted to a convenient tree, to which he was securely tied by both ankles, while a decoyon each side alternately bullied and cozened him. The moment he was tied, just as he was on the point of thinking his new-found friends not such bad fellows after all, and was preparing to console himself for the loss of his mother, they heartlessly left him. Oh, how angry he was! He screamed, frothed, lunged and lunged against his fetters, bit the earth, and broke off the point of an embryonic tusk trying to demolish a stone he had dug up in his frenzy. But it was all in vain; and at last the poor little baby, just like other babies, broke down and cried. I saw him, and later I saw his mother, the terrible old cow, crying, and they shed real tears.

Meanwhile the chase had gone on across the kraal, and on the other side one of the cows had been wedged in between two decoys for the needful moment. A nooser had slipped down under the decoy’s belly for protection, and actually had the noose over her ankle when she felt him, and let loose that four-ton kick he had sought protection from. Luckily it missed him a hair’s-breadth; but the savage old lady got free by it, and the nooser was a crumpled, fearful ruin for the rest of that day. Again they caught her, but she snapped the inch-and-a-quarter hawser as if it had been twine. The third attempt was successful, but by now madam had regained her wits and gathered together her scattered forces for rescue work. No doubt she ached also to avenge her baby, for she headed a tremendous charge against the decoys, and the bulls had to knock her off her feet time after time before she gave up the project. Kalawane then decided that the rest of the herd would be subjugated more easily after she had been disposed of.

This was more easily decided upon than accomplished. The old cow was a tactician of the highest order, and her gifts as a fighter amounted to positive genius. Several times they had her cornered, but she smashed her way through. They scattered her followers, and finally managed to isolate her on a small knoll between the stockade and a deep gully. Here she successfully eluded the skill of the decoys for at least half an hour, and it was while I was endeavoring to obtain a closer view of this heroic last stand that I was treated to a bit of insight into elephant cunning that I am not likely to forget.

The decoys had the old cow nearly cornered in a space close to the stockade and about one hundred and fifty yards from me, with the gully before mentioned running between us. I started to cross to the scene of conflict, but before descending into the gully, and thus losing sight of the jungle about me for a moment, I took a glance around. It was fortunate that I did so, for about two hundred yards below me, on the same side of the gully, was one of the young bulls coming stealthily through the underbrush, and there was something in his manner which warned me that he “had intentions.” But the very moment I became aware of his state of mind he apparently became as exactly aware of mine; for he dropped his ears, stopped, and then, seemingly disgusted that he should have betrayed himself, deliberately turned his back on me and walked off in the direction whence he had come. Nor did he once glance back, but near the brink of the gully stopped again in some scrub and, with his head wholly averted from me, appeared to be lost in thought. This seemed my chance, so I ran rapidly down the side of the gully, and for only a few seconds lost sight of him.

But what was my astonishment, upon climbing up the other side, to see him coming toward me like a hurricane and not more than seventy yards away! He must have started at full speed the moment my back was turned. Fortunately the stockade was not far off, and I made for it—hurriedly. It is possible, though, that I might not have escaped him, for thin, wiry, and almost invisible creepers clutched my legs at every step, had not some of the spearmen rushed to my rescue. They actually threw sticks at him! But for me it was a very interesting moment.

However, I was in time to see the defeat of the old empress. After many vain and furious struggles she was noosed around the left ankle with the rope attached to the biggest of all the decoys. At the word, this magnificent, six-ton brute picked out a tree, and without even a pause dragged the old lady off her feet. To make her humiliation more complete, he actually “wiped up the earth with her” when she spread herself out on the ground in protest, dragging her along with no more effort than if she had been a baby-carriage. But madam had not done with them yet. Arrived at the tree, she put up a glorious fight, even breaking two ropes, and she might have won a brief liberty had not two of the decoys shown marvelous intelligence in blocking her flight, butting her into place and firmly lashing her there by winding their powerful trunks around her neck from each side. Then, while the ropes that forever withheld her from her liberty were being securely knotted about her legs, these two gigantic old frauds, looking all the while wonderfully benignant and solemn, alternately bullied and flattered her. While one caressed her gently with his trunk the other thumped her in the ribs, and sometimes, under the guise of affection, both of them together would lean their vast bulk against her and force her gently but irresistibly into the position desired of their masters. Oneknewthat in elephant language they were talking to her somewhat after this fashion:

“Come, my dear, be reasonable! A little more to the right! Softly!Softly!Tut, tut! It’s for your own good. There, now; that’s better. Just look at us; andweused to be as wild and foolish as you are.”

And then they cuddled her a little, gave her a final pat while the last knot was being tied, and left her! For a little while the old cow raged horribly; and then, like her abandoned baby, she broke down and cried. It is in such scenes that the fascination of elephant-kraaling, is found. The animals not only display a really wonderful intelligence and the possession of those lovable qualities we are pleased to term “human,” but they exhibit at all times, the trained elephants especially, a noble temper and that kind of profoundcharacterwhich is associated in our thoughts with only the simplest and noblest of men. It must be admitted that the elephants that have been gentled and trained by man exhibit the finest intelligence and a majesty of port rarely if ever observed in the wild ones. They impress one as having become grand under servitude. It is difficult to observe them and believe that they would wish to return to their wild state. This is no doubt sentimentality on my part, but it is hard to be on close terms with a noble elephant and not be awakened to sentiment concerning it.

The noosing of their leader sealed the fate of the rest of the herd (not that it had ever been in doubt); but by sunset all had been tied to trees save two, and it was reasonably certain these could not escape. The last glimpse I had of them they were standing in grief-stricken silence before the prostrate figure of a tethered calf whose struggles had worn him out. All night the hoarse trumpetings of the fettered-up mothers and the wails of their calves filled the jungle with lamentation. Occasionally, far off in the wilderness, a deep-throated bull would send out a long call of sympathy. Somewhere in the darkness the herd that had escaped hovered near, but the beaters’ line of fires kept them back. The captured ten were lost to the jungle forever.

Next morning, in the earliest light, I went up to the stockade to have a last look. The youngsters were still bawling and plunging frantically against their fetters, but the old empress was motionless and silent. So still she stood that in the pale light I took a time exposure of her. Her hind quarters and her flanks sagged, and her head expressed all the ache of utter despair. Youth might still cry and struggle against its fate, but she had given up the fight. Two hours later they had harnessed her securely between two mighty bulls, and a pygmy man had climbed upon her back. Then she uttered one last and mighty burst of anguished rage before she fell into the captive’s stride that was to carry her to her new life of labor down on the low-country estates.

I have always been fond of big-game shooting, and I have longed to include this mightiest of beasts in my huntsman’s bag; but I came away from the kraal with one clear idea in my mind, dominating all others: I never shall willingly kill an elephant.

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