Part 5

Plundering bands survey the ground, study localities, go on their duroras like a troop of Dacoits, and are organized for the time being in a rude way, under the influence of what Professor Romanes calls “the collective instinct.”

Hunters favorably situated can easily see this. A far-off trumpet now and then announces the herd’s advance through the forest, but as they approach the point where possible danger is to be apprehended, no token of their presence is given, and its first indication is the appearance of a scout,--not a straggler who has got in front by accident, but an animal upon whom the others depend, and who is there to see that all is safe. Everything about the creature, its actions and attitudes, the way it steps, listens, and searches the air with slowly moving trunk, speaks for itself of wariness, knowledge of what might occur, and an appreciation of the position it occupies; no doubt, to a certain extent, of a sense of responsibility. When this scout feels satisfied that no danger is impending, it moves on, at the same time assuring those who yet remain hidden that they may follow, by one of the many significant sounds that elephants make.

A number of narratives describe events as they are likely then to occur, but they are merely hunting stories, and so far as the writer’s memory serves, do not bring out the animal’s traits in any special way. It would appear, however, that the behavior of elephants who unexpectedly meet with Europeans in those places where all the resistance previously experienced came from farmers themselves, is very different from what it is in the former case. Then they are said to be difficult to get rid of, and when driven away from one point by shouts, horns, drums, and the firing of guns, they rush away to another part of the plantations, and continue their depredations. No such passive resistance as this is attempted when English sportsmen are upon the spot. Elephants discover their presence immediately. Upon the first explosion of a heavy rifle, the alarm is sounded from different parts of the field, and the herd betakes itself to flight without any notion of halting by the way. Their dominant idea is to get clear of those premises as soon as possible.

“The elephant,” says Andersson, “has a very expressive organ of voice. The sounds which he utters have been distinguished by his Asiatic keepers into three kinds. The first is very shrill, and is produced by blowing through his trunk. This is indicative of pleasure. The second, made by the mouth, is a low note expressive of want; and the third, proceeding from the throat, is a terrific roar of anger or revenge.” Sanderson seems to think that these discriminations are somewhat fanciful. He remarks that “elephants make use of a great variety of sounds in communicating with one another, and in expressing their wants and feelings.” But he adds that, while “some are made by the trunk and some by the throat, the conjunctures in which either means of expression is employed, cannot be strictly classified, as pleasure, fear, want, and other emotions are indicated by either.” Leveson, on the contrary, gives a list of these intonations, and describes the manner in which they are produced. So also does Tennant; and Baker adds another sound to those before given; “a growl,” this writer calls it, and he says that “it is exactly like the rumbling of distant thunder.”

Undoubtedly these animals express their thoughts and feelings intelligibly by the voice, as also through facial expressions, and by means of such gestures as they are capable of making. It has been before said that although the elephant’s face is half covered up, and there are no muscles either in his case or in that of any other animal, whose primary function is to express mental or emotional states, his physiognomy may be in the highest degree significant.

“The courage of elephants,” writes Captain Drayson, “seems to fluctuate in a greater degree than that of man. Sometimes a herd is unapproachable from savageness; sometimes the animals are the greatest curs in creation.” What is called boldness varies considerably in different species, among members of the same species, and in the same individuals at different times. It is a quality, that, like all others, is double-sided, certain elements belonging to the mind, and the residue to the body. Elephants are nervous; that is to say, their nerve centres--the ganglia in which energy is stored up--are constitutionally in a state of more or less unstable equilibrium, so that stimulus, whether of external origin, or initiated centrically, is apt to produce explosive effects. Courage depends upon physical and mental constitution, upon specializations in race, training, and structure, upon differences in personal experience and organization.

So much as this may be said with confidence, but on what grounds, biological or psychological, is it possible for Professor Romanes to assert that the elephant seems usually to be “actuated by the most magnanimous of feelings”? Magnanimity belongs to the rarest and loftiest type of human character: how did an elephant come by it? The obligations of mental and moral congruity are not less binding than those of physical fitness. No one nowadays draws an elephant with a human head; but a beast with self-respect, courage, refinement, sympathy, and charity enough to be magnanimous, does not seem to outrage any sense of propriety. Works like those of Watson (“Reasoning Power of Animals”), Broderip (“Zoölogical Recreations”), Bingley (“Animal Biography”), Swainson (“Habits and Instincts of Animals”), too often interpret facts so that they will fit preconceived opinions. There is a story, for example, by Captain Shipp, of how, during the siege of Bhurtpore, an elephant pushed another one into a well because he had appropriated his bucket. Tales like this resemble pictures in which the design and execution are both weak, and which depend for their effect upon accessories illegitimately introduced into the composition. Probably a large part of the present inhabitants of the earth have seen animals who, while contending for some possession, acted in a similar manner; but they were not elephants, nor were the circumstances of a well and a siege at hand to set them off, and produce an impression that the actual incident does not justify. The grief of captive elephants over their situation is a subject upon which many fine remarks have been made. Colonel Yule (“Embassy to Ava”) states that numbers die from this cause alone; but yaarba’hd, either in its dropsical or atrophic form, is what chiefly proves fatal to them, and this is brought on by the sudden and violent interruption of their natural way of life. According to Strachan, Sanderson, and other experts, the disorder is due to an overthrow of functional balance; something which is sure to induce disease whenever it occurs. Sterility, temporary failure of milk in females with calves, together with the various effects already mentioned, may be referred to the same cause. It is not said that elephants never die of grief; still less, that this is impossible. Any animal highly organized enough to feel intense and persistent sorrow may perish. Pain, either physical or mental, is intimately connected with waste of tissue and paralysis of reparative action. Bain’s formula that “states of pleasure are concomitant with an increase, and states of pain with a decrease, of some, or all, of the vital functions,” is not strictly correct as it stands; still the truth it is intended to convey remains indisputable. Grant-Allen (“Physiological Æsthetics”) defines pleasure as a “concomitant of the healthy action of any or all of the organs or members supplied with afferent cerebro-spinal nerves, to an extent not exceeding the ordinary powers of reparation possessed by the system.” Grief, when intense, reverses this, makes normal function impossible, palsies the viscera, and impairs or perverts those nutritive processes upon which life directly depends. But the profound and abiding sorrow this race cherishes in servitude is a romance. There is nothing to show the regret and longing which have been imagined. Elephants struggle for a while against coercion, and then forget. They fail to take advantage of opportunities for escape, and when they do, the fugitives are recaptured more easily than they were taken in the first place. Instances have often occurred of their voluntary return after a long absence. In the beginning, it is the finest animals who perish. They kill themselves in their struggles, or die of disease. Subsequently, it is said that domestication lengthens average life. This must, however, be one of those blank assertions made so commonly about wild beasts; since, independently of any other objection, it is evident that the statement, in order to be worth anything, should rest upon the basis of a wide comparison between the relative longevities of free and captive animals, and vital statistics of this kind, not only have not been tabulated, but it is impossible that they should have been collected.

Colonel Pollok remarks that “at all times, this is a wandering race, and consumes so much, and wastes so much, that no single forest could long support a large number of such occupants.” Livingstone, Forsyth, and others have, however, noted the fact that little or no permanent injury to extensive woodlands was wrought by these animals. They do not overturn trees, as is popularly believed, and still less do they uproot them. Elephants bend down stems by pressure with their foreheads, and they go loitering about breaking branches, till the place looks as if a whirlwind had passed over it, but these devastations are of a kind soon repaired. In the forests of India they have never met with such adversaries, or been exposed to the same dangers, as the species encountered on the “Dark Continent.” Some Indian tribes worshipped, and all feared them. They passed their lives for the most part in peace, finding food plentiful, ruining much, and finishing nothing. Pitfalls were few and far between; no weighted darts fell upon them as they passed beneath the boughs, no pigmy savage stole behind as they leaned against a tree boll and woke the echoes of the wood with deep, slow-drawn, and far-resounding snores, to thrust a broad-bladed spear into their bodies, and leave it there to lacerate and kill his victim slowly. Neither were herds driven over precipices, nor into chasms, nor did hordes of capering barbarians come against them with assagais, and scream, while pricking them to death,--

“Oh Chief! Chief! we have come to kill you, Oh Chief! Chief! many more shall die. The gods have said it.”

All this was common throughout Africa, while in Asia the natives seldom aggressed against elephants except in the way of capturing them. It is true that this was done awkwardly, and often caused injury or death; but that was unintentional, and as a rule they roamed unmolested among the solitudes of nature.

Existence had its drawbacks, however. Elephants were not eaten in Asia, and not hunted for their ivory to any extent, but they were used in war, and the state of no native prince could be complete unless he had an elephant to ride on and several caparisoned animals for show. Owing to these needs and fashions the animals were captured extensively. In many places at present small parties of men, often only two or three, go on foot into the forests as their predecessors did ages ago, each with a small bag of provisions, and a green hide rope capable of being considerably stretched. An elephant’s track is almost as explicit and full of information to them as a passport or descriptive list, and when they have found the right one, it is patiently followed till the beast that made it is discovered. Then in the great majority of cases its fate is fixed. Flight, concealment, resistance, are in vain. In some “inevitable hour” a noose of plaited thongs that cannot be broken is slipped around one of the hind feet, and a turn or two quickly taken about a tree. A high-bred elephant gives up when he finds that the first fierce struggle for freedom is unavailing, but the meerga’s resistance lasts longer. After one leg has been secured it is easy to fetter both, and then the captors camp in front of the animal in order to accustom it to their presence. By degrees they loosen its bonds, feed and pacify it. When anger is over, and its terrors are dissipated, these men lead their captive off to a market at some great fair, and they lie about what they have done and what the elephant did, with a fertility of invention, a height and length and breadth of mendacity which it would be vain to expect to find exceeded in this imperfect state of existence.

The government also often wants elephants, and when this is the case, captures are made in a different manner, and upon a greater scale. What is done is to surround a herd and drive it into an enclosure called a keddah. This is often a very complicated and difficult thing to accomplish. Far away in some wild unsettled region of the Nilgiri or Satpúra hills, the uplands of Mysore, or elsewhere, an English official pitches his tent, surveys the country, and sends out scouts. To him sooner or later comes a person without any clothes to speak of, but with the most exquisite manners, and says that, owing to his Excellency’s good fortune, by which all adverse influences have been happily averted, he begs to represent that a herd of elephants, who were created on purpose to be captured by him, is marked down. Then the commander-in-chief of the catching forces opens a campaign that may last for weeks, or even months. The topography has been carefully studied with reference to occupying positions which will prevent the animals from breaking through a line of posts that are established around them, and between which communication is kept up by flying detachments. Drafts of men from the district and a trained contingent the officer brought with him, are manœuvred so that they can concentrate upon the point selected for their keddah, which is not constructed till towards the close of these movements, since the area surrounded is very extensive and it is not at first known exactly where it must be placed. Its position is fixed within certain limits, however, and their object is to drive the herd in that direction without at first attracting attention to the fact that this is being done, and thereby causing continued alarm. Those who direct proceedings know the character of elephants, and count upon their lack of intelligence to aid them in carrying out the design. Before any apprehension of real danger makes itself felt, they have voluntarily, as it seems to them, moved away from parties who just showed themselves from time to time and then disappeared. They still feed in solitudes apparently uninvaded, still stand about after the manner of their kind, blowing dust through their trunks or squirting water over their bodies. They fan themselves with branches, and sleep in peace.

At length, long after the true state of things would have been fully appreciated by most other species, the herd finds out that it is always moving in a definite direction. Then a dim consciousness of the truth, which day by day becomes more vivid until it arrives at certainty, takes possession of their minds. From that time an exhibition of traits which scarcely correspond with popular views upon the elephant’s intellect is constantly made. If they had anything like the ability attributed to them, the toils by which they are surrounded could be broken with ease. There is no time from their first sight of a human being to the very moment when they are bound to trees, at which they could not escape. It is useless to say they do not know this; that is precisely what the creatures are accused of. If they were such animals as they are said to be, they would know it, and act accordingly. But as soon as the situation is revealed, they become helpless; their resources of every kind are at an end. They stand still in stupid despair, break out in transient and impotent fits of rage, make pitiable demonstrations of attack upon points where they could not be opposed for an instant if the assault was made in earnest, and at length suffer themselves to be driven into an enclosure that would no more hold them against their will than if it had been made of gauze.

An elephant corral or keddah is a stout stockade with a shallow ditch dug around it inside, and slight fences of brush diverging for some distance from its entrance. Incredible as it may seem, single elephants frequently break out of these places, but a herd hardly ever; they have not enterprise, pluck, and presence of mind enough to follow the example when it is set them. Sometimes, as we have seen, elephants may be fierce and determined; desperation has been shown to be among the possibilities of their nature. But whereas an exceptional individual will, from pure ferocity, brave wounds and death, nothing can so move the race as to cause a display of ordinary self-possession. It is quite true that whenever the imprisoned band comes rushing down upon any part of the keddah, they are met with fire-brands, the discharge of unshotted guns, and an infernal clamor; but if that be urged in explanation of their hesitation, it may be replied that if the whole herd had as much resolution as a single lion brought to bay, they would sweep away everything before them as the fallen leaves of their forests are swept away by a gale.

Often among the bewildered and panic-stricken crowd within a corral some animal is so dangerous that it has to be shot; the majority, however, soon grow calmer, and then comes the task of securing those which it is desirable to keep. When these are males, the procedure is as follows: An experienced female is introduced; she marches up to the tusker, and very shortly all sense of his situation vanishes from his “half-human mind.” The fascinating creature who is made to cajole him has a man on her neck whose voice and motions direct her in everything she does; but that circumstance, which might undoubtedly be supposed to attract the captive’s attention, is entirely overlooked, and when, either by herself or with the assistance of another Delilah, she has backed her Samson up against a tree, two or three other men who have been riding on her back, but whom he has not noticed, slip down and make him fast. As has been said, after a few fits of hysterics, his resistance is at an end; the monarch of the forest is tamed, and considering what has been written about elephants, it is indeed surprising that no one has reported the precise course of thought that produced his resignation. To express this change in the felicitous language of Professor Romanes, the elephant has experienced “a transformation of emotional psychology.” That is to say, a being which has heretofore been nothing but an unreclaimed wild beast, is by the simple process of being frightened, deceived, abused, and enslaved, at once converted into one of the chief ornaments of animated nature!

The question arises as one ponders upon statements like this, whether we really know anything worth speaking of about inferior animals, and if it is possible to use expressions like “cruel as a tiger,” “brave as a lion,” or “sagacious as an elephant,” rationally. As for any philosophical, or, as Spencer calls it, “completely unified knowledge” on the subject, nobody possesses it; at the same time the natural sciences may be so applied as to bring certain truths to light in this connection. It is plain, for example, that an elephant does not kill his keeper because he is fond of him; but it is one thing to start out with the assumption that this noble-hearted, affectionate, and magnanimous animal would never have been guilty of such an act unless it had been maltreated, and it is another, and quite a different course to begin with the fact that the deed was done by a brute in whose inherited nature no radical change could by any possibility have been effected by such training as it has received. If now we endeavor to ascertain what that nature was,--study the records of behavior in wild and domesticated specimens, and look at this by the light which biology and psychology, without any assumptions whatever, cast upon it,--we shall find ourselves in the best position for investigating any particular case under consideration. Many accounts of such murders have been given at length. We know how, why, when, and where the animal began its enmity, and the manner in which it was shown or concealed, so that, having investigated the matter in the way described, we are, to a certain extent, able, not to generalize the character of this species, but to put aside immature opinions, and say that since very many elephants exhibit traits which are in conformity with those to be expected of them, these probably belong to the species at large, and may be displayed with different degrees of violence whenever circumstances favor their manifestation.

The chief characteristics of elephants have been discussed, and an attempt has been made to place them in their true light. The writer has not found the half-human elephant in nature, nor does it appear from records that any one else has done so. An elephant is a wild beast, comparatively with others undeveloped by a severe struggle for existence; superficially changed in captivity, and cut off from improvement by barrenness. It is capable of receiving a considerable amount of instruction, and learns quickly and well; but how far its acquisitions are assimilated and converted into faculty, is altogether uncertain. In the savage state elephants do nothing that other animals cannot do as well, and many of them better. Mere bulk, and its accompaniment, strength, do not influence character in any definite manner that can be pointed out.

In captivity, elephants are commonly obedient, partly because, having never had any enemies to contend with, they are naturally inoffensive, and partly for the reason that these animals are easily overawed, very nervous, and extremely liable to feelings of causeless apprehension.

Courage in cold blood is certainly not one of their qualities; nevertheless, being amenable to discipline, and having some sense of responsibility, certain elephants are undoubtedly stanch both in war and the chase.

This animal is easily excited, very irritable, prone to take offence, and subject to fits of hysterical passion. Thus it happens that wild elephants are the most formidable objects of pursuit known to exist, and that the majority of those held in durance exhibit dangerous outbreaks of temper. When an elephant is vicious, he displays capabilities in the way of evil such as none of his kind, when left to themselves, have ever been known to manifest in the direction of virtue. A “rogue” is the most terrible of wild beasts; the captive tusker who has determined upon murder finds no being but man, who in the prosecution of his design is so patient, so self-contained, so deceitful, and so deadly. It is idle to say, speaking of the relations between elephants and men, that the good qualities of the former greatly predominate, since if it had been otherwise, no association between them would have been possible--they could not have inhabited the same regions.

The concluding pages may, perhaps, serve to show how far this sketch of the elephant’s character is compatible with facts.

Charles John Andersson (“The Lion and the Elephant”) observes that, “whether or not the elephant be the harmless creature he is represented by many, certain it is that to the sportsman he is the most formidable of all those beasts, the lion not excepted, that roam the African wilds; and few there are who make the pursuit of him a profession, that do not, sooner or later, come to grief of some kind.” Being social animals, there is a certain sympathy and affection between members of the same family; but while striking instances of this are recorded, the bulk of evidence tends the other way.

Impressive examples of solicitude have, however, been observed. Moodie tells that he saw a female--whom the experience of most hunters shows to be much more likely to act in this manner than a male--guard her wounded mate, and how she, “regardless of her own danger, quitted her shelter in the woods, rushed out to his assistance, walked round and round him, chased away the assailants, and returning to his side caressed him. Whenever he attempted to walk, she placed her flank or her shoulder to his wounded side and supported him.” Frederick Green wrote an altogether unique account to Andersson of the succor of an elephant that had been shot, by one who was a stranger, of the same sex, and who encountered him far from the scene where his misfortune had befallen him.

The Bushmen, he says, often asserted that elephants would carry water in their trunks to a wounded companion at a long distance in the “Weldt.” Green, however, did not believe it, until, while hunting in the Lake Regions, he was compelled, from want of ammunition, “to leave an elephant that was crippled (one of his fore legs had been broken, besides having eleven wounds in his body) some thirty miles from the waggons.”

“As I felt confident,” this writer continues, “that he would die of his wounds ... I despatched Bushmen after him instead of going myself; but they, not attending to my commands, remained for two days beside an elephant previously killed by my after-rider. It was, therefore, not until the fourth evening after I left this elephant that the Bushmen came up with him.... They found him still alive and standing, but unable to walk.... They slept near him, thinking he might die during the night; but at an early hour after dark they heard another elephant at a distance, apparently calling, and he was answered by the wounded one. The calls and answers continued until the stranger came up, and they saw him giving the hurt one water, after which he assisted in taking his maimed companion away.” Such was the story told Green when the party came back. He disbelieved their statements entirely, went off to the spot to see what had happened for himself, and thus relates his own observations:--

“The next afternoon found me at the identical place where I had left the wounded elephant. I can only say that the account of the Bushmen as to the stranger elephant coming up to the maimed one was proved by the spoor; and that their further assertion as to his having assisted his unfortunate friend in removing elsewhere was also fully verified from the spoor of the two being close alongside of each other--the broken leg of the wounded one leaving after it a deep furrow in the sand. As I was satisfied that these parts of their story were correct, I did not see any further reason to doubt the other.”

Male elephants rarely fall in the holes which undermine so many parts of Africa; they carry their trunks low, have no one to look out for but themselves, and so detect these traps, and generally uncover them. Moodie makes the statement that many elephants follow the recent trails of those who went before them to watering-places, and if these turned off, took it for a sign of danger, and did not drink. After what Inglis and Hallet say to the same effect of tigers, after St. John’s observations upon red deer, and Lloyd’s on the Scandinavian fox, inductive reasoning like this does not seem at all incredible. Amral, chief of the Namaqua Hottentots, told Galton and Andersson that on one occasion he and others were in pursuit of a herd of elephants, and at length came to a wagon-track which the animals had crossed. Here the latter, as was seen by their spoor, had come to a halt, and after carefully examining the ground with their trunks, formed a circle in the centre of which their leader took up his position. Afterwards individuals were sent out to make further investigations. The Raad, or debate, this chieftain went on to say, must have been long and weighty, for they (the elephants) had written much on the ground with their probosces. The decision evidently was that to remain longer in that locality would be dangerous, and they therefore came to the unanimous resolution to decamp forthwith. Attempts to overtake them, Amral went on to say, were useless; for, though they followed their tracks till sunset, they saw no more of them.

What these elephants thought when they found a track which, to them, was new and inexplicable, is, of course, a matter of conjecture; but their trail revealed everything that was done on this occasion, as clearly as if the Hottentots had been eye-witnesses of their actions.