- This Elephant Used Often To Pass Through
The Bazar, Or Market-Place, Where A Woman Who There Sold Herbs Used To
Give Him A Handful As He Passed Her Stall.
This elephant afterwards went
mad,[234] and, having broken his fetters, took his way furiously through
the market-place, whence all the people fled as quickly as possible to
get out of his way.
Among these was his old friend the herb-woman, who,
in her haste and terror, forgot to take away her little child. On coming
to the place where this woman was in use to sit, the elephant stopped,
and seeing the child among the herbs, he took it up gently in his trunk,
and laid it carefully on a stall under the projecting roof of a house
hard by, without doing it the smallest injury, and then continued his
furious course. A travelling Jesuit, named Acosta, relates a similar
story of an elephant at Goa, as from his own experience. - The king keeps
certain elephants for the execution of malefactors. When one of these is
brought forth to dispatch a criminal, if his keeper desires that the
offender be destroyed speedily, this vast creature will instantly crush
him to atoms under his foot; but if desired to torture him, will break
his limbs successively, as men are broken on the wheel.
[Footnote 234: This temporary madness of the male elephants is usual in
the rutting season. - E.]
The Mogul takes great delight in these stately animals, and often, when
he sits in state, calls for some of the finest and largest to be
brought, which are taught to bend before him, as in reverence, when they
come into his presence.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 644 of 910
Words from 174799 to 175082
of 247546
