penditure of animal power, has been executed in our own day by a private gentleman, through the skilful application of scientific principles, at a very moderate expense *. When Timour built his great mosque at Samarcand, ninety-five elephants were engaged in drawing the stones. When ship-building was practised in a rude manner in India, elephants were employed to force the vessels off the stocks into the water. Verthema, who travelled in India in 1503, gives an example of their power of dragging ships on shore. "I saw an instance of the extraordinary strength of these animals while at Cananore, where some Mahometans endeavoured to draw a ship on the land, stern foremost, upon three rollers; on which occasion three elephants, commodiously applied, drew with great force, and, bending their heads down to the ground, brought the ship on the land t." In another place the same traveller says, "I once saw the trunk of a tree overthrown by one elephant, which twenty-four men had in vain attempted." We have already seen that the vast power of the animal has been exercised in beating down walls. In the war of Coromandel, in 1751, the gates of the fort of Ponomaley, in which the English under Clive made a spirited defence, were attempted to be battered down by elephants, whose foreheads were covered with iron plates. Such uses of the power of this quadruped are, of course, fast yielding to the more effectual power of machines, which are maintained at less cost, and do their work with more precision. The present employment of elephants in the East is principally confined to the carriage of persons and of

See the account of Sir Henry Steuart's park at Allanton; Library of Entertaining Knowledge, vol. ii.

+ Hakluyt's Collection of Voyages.

Orme's Hindostan, vol. i. p. 198.

heavy burthens in travelling, and on the march of an army; to field sports; and to processions and ceremonials.

"At Barrackpoor," says Bishop Heber," for the first time I mounted an elephant, the motion of which I thought far from disagreeable, though very different from that of a horse. As the animal moves both feet on the same side at once, the sensation is like that of being carried on a man's shoulders. A full-grown elephant carries two persons in the howdah,' besides the 'mohout,' who sits on his neck, and a servant on the crupper behind, with an umbrella. The howdah itself, which Europeans use, is not unlike the body of a small gig, but without a head." Capt. Williamson, who possessed, probably, much of the sportsman's desire of rapid motion, says, "the gait of an elephant is very peculiar, being similar to the artificial pace of ambling taught to some horses. It is far from displeasing in a horse, but causes such a motion, when mounted on an elephant, as rarely to be borne for any distance. Indeed, I know nothing more uncomfortable and tedious, I may even say painful, than a long journey in a howdah. It occasions a lassitude not to be described. We must suppose that habit reconciles persons to it, as we see the natives travel, for perhaps twenty miles or more in a forenoon, without any apparent uneasiness. The largest elephants are, in general, the most uncomfortable in this respect t." The smaller elephants are sometimes ridden with a saddle and stirrups. Others have a pad, on which six or eight persons can sit, some astride and some sideways. The animal kneels down, that the riders may ascend; and as he is generally impatient while being mounted,

* Journal, i. 36. + Oriental Sports, p. 31.

a man puts his foot upon his fore-leg, and sometimes even presses it with a spear*. A ladder is attached to the elephant's side, for the use of those who ride in the howdah. The natives descend from their seats upon the pad by means of a rope.

The guidance of an elephant upon which persons of wealth and authority ride, in British India, is invariably committed to the mohout. In Ava, the practice is different. Mr. Crawfurd says, "After the

ment.

elephant combats were over, the king prepared to take his departure. His elephant, one of the noblest animals I have ever seen, having the trunk, head, and part of the neck, of a white flesh-colour, and in other respects altogether perfect, was brought up close to the shed under which we were sitting, and he mounted it with great agility, placed himself upon the neck of the animal, took the hook in his hand, and seemed to be perfectly at home in this employWe afterwards saw the heir-apparent, a child of thirteen years of age, guiding his elephant in the same way. This practice is, I believe, peculiar to the Burmans: for, in Western India, at least, no person of condition ever condescends to guide his own elephant. There is, at least, some manliness in the custom; and I should not be surprised to find that the neck of the elephant would be found, on experience, the most agreeable and easy seat to the rider." The Emperor Akbar, in the same manner, rode every kind of elephant, making them obedient to his command; and he carried his manliness even farther than the Kings of Ava, for," in the rutting season, he frequently puts his feet upon the tusks of the elephant and mounts him, to the astonishment of those who are used to these animals *."

In the present times the employment of elephants in oriental travelling has little of the ancient pomp and splendour which used to attend the progresses of the Mogul princes. A native rajah now and then comes into Calcutta, upon some mission to the British authorities, riding in a magnificent howdah, with his elephant covered with brilliant trappings. But, generally, the stately animal is used for the conveyance of the manifold servants that wait upon the rich in India; or he is laden with tents and tent

* Ayeen Akbery.

poles, or with water-bottles, and pots, and saucepans, and every other paraphernalia of the kitchen, slung about his body in all directions. His appearance, then, is somewhat more ludicrous than dignified. But in the days of Timour, when the despot rode “in a chariot with four wheels, upon which is a fair chamber of sweet-smelling lignum aloes, which is within covered with plates of fine gold, dubbed with precious stones and great pearls, and drawn by four elephants*;" or in those of Akbar, when "magnificent amarees were put upon the backs of swift-paced elephants † ;" or in those of Jehanghir, who rode on an elephant through the streets of his capital, followed by twenty royal elephants for his own ascending, so rich, that in precious stones and furniture they braved the sun," and whose "wives, on their elephants, were carried like parakitoes (paroquets), half a mile behind him‡;" in those days the journeys of the elephant were occasions of habitual pomp. The most minute description of these splendours may be found in Bernier's account of the progress of Aurengzebe, from Delhi to Kashmire, in the year 1664.

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The perfection of European travelling is extreme speed; the march of this Mogul prince through his dominions was as measured as a funeral pageant. Bernier, after having been two months on the road from Delhi to Lahore, a distance of a hundred and twenty leagues-about the same that an English mail performs in forty-eight hours-says, "this is indeed slow and solemn marching.' "" When we consider, however, the retinue with which Aurengzebe moved, we shall cease to wonder at the pace at which he advanced. "In this march from Delhi to

*Sir John Maundeville.

† Ayeen Akbery. An amaree, or amari, is a seat with a canopy. Sir T. Rowe, quoted in Purchas.

VOL. II.