CHAP. 9. (9.)—THE METHOD BY WHICH THEY ARE TAMED.
Elephants of furious temper are tamed by hunger[1] and
blows, while other elephants are placed near to keep them quiet,
when the violent fit is upon them, by means of chains. Besides this, they are more particularly violent when in heat,[2]
at which time they will level to the ground the huts of the
Indians with their tusks. It is on this account that they are
prevented from coupling, and the females are kept in herds
separate from the males, just the same way as with other
cattle. Elephants, when tamed, are employed in war, and
carry into the ranks of the enemy towers filled with armed
men; and on them, in a very great measure, depends the ultimate result of the battles that are fought in the East. They
tread under foot whole companies, and crush the men in their
armour. The very least sound, however, of the grunting of
the hog terrifies them:[3] when wounded and panic-stricken,
they invariably fall back, and become no less formidable for
the destruction which they deal to their own side, than to
their opponents. The African elephant is afraid of the Indian,
and does not dare so much as look at it, for the latter is of
much greater bulk.[4]
1. We have the same account given by Ælian and by Strabo.—B.
2. Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. vi. c. 18, remarks, that the violence of the
animal, which is produced by an accidental cause, as also that arising from
venereal excitement, are counteracted by opposite modes of treatment; the
one by depriving it of food, the other by over-feeding it; the former, in
order to break its strength, and the latter, to divert it into a different
channel.—B.
3. Ælian, Anim. Nat. B. i. c. 38, states that the Romans employed this
mode of terrifying the elephants brought against them by Pyrrhus.—B.
4. That this was the general opinion among the ancients, we learn from
Polybius, Ælian, Livy, Diodorus Siculus, and others. Cuvier remarks,
that this may have been the case with the animals from Barbary, or the
north of Africa, but that it is not so with those from the middle or south
of that continent.—B.