They Often Fight Before Him, Beginning Their
Combats Like Rams, By Running Furiously Against Each Other, And Butting
With Their Foreheads.
They afterwards use their tusks and teeth,
fighting with the utmost fury, yet are they most careful to preserve
their keepers, so that few of them receive any hurt in these
rencounters.
They are governed by a hooked instrument of steel, made
like the iron end of a boat-hook, with which their keepers, who sit on
their necks, put them back, or goad them on, at pleasure.
The king has many of his elephants trained up for war; each of which
carries an iron gun about six feet long, which is fastened to a strong
square frame of wood on his back, made fast by strong girths or ropes
round his body. This gun carries a bullet about the size of a small
tennis-ball, and is let into the timber with a loop of iron. The four
corners of the wooden frame have each a silken banner on a short pole,
and a gunner sits within, to shoot as occasion serves, managing the gun
like a harquebuss, or large wall-piece. When the king travels, he is
attended by many elephants armed in this manner, as part of his guard.
He keeps many of them likewise, merely for state, which go before him,
and are adorned with bosses of brass, and some have their bosses made of
silver, or even of gold; having likewise many bells jingling about them,
in the sound of which the animal delights.
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