Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1891 — LOG-LIFTING ELEPHANTS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LOG-LIFTING ELEPHANTS.

How tho Intelligent Animal* Work—They Pile Up Lumber with Ease.

Hon. Carter H. Harrison, in his a “Race with the kflEgjhJß Bun,” describes some timber yards rlinfy and saw-mills in jSreyfffit . Rangoon, where he SFnMMT saw what he calls the lions of the city the working elephants. Thelumber is not sawed ’SjEjlr into boards, but the W slab is taken off

and the good stuff left in the form of square timber. The logs are many of them three feet in diameter and thirty or forty feet long. These the elephants draw from the river and pile in systematic order. Then, when they are needed, they roll them to the ways and assist in adjusting them for the saw. After the log is cut s the elephant goes among the machinery, takes the slabs away and carries the jgood timber and piles it up or lays it gently upon the ox carts to be hauled off. While we were present a carpenter wanted lumber from a particular log which was under several others. One of the monsters rolled the upper logs off and pushed the chosen stick to the mill. The way was not clear—the log butted against the others. He pushed these aside and guided his piece through them with a sagacity almost human. His stick became wedged. He pushed and tugged; it would not budge, but at a whispered word from the mahout and the promise of nice food he bent to it. Still it stuck. With a whistle audible for half a mile, he got on his knees, straightened out his hind legs, and put his whole force into a push. He was successful. We could almost

read his satisfaction in the gentle flaps of his huge ears and the graceful curve of his proboscis as he put it up to the mounted mahout, asking for hia reward. Sticks more than two feet thick and twenty feet long are lifted bodily upon the great ivories, and are then carried off and laid upon the gangways so gently as not to make a jar. We saw one of the elephants carrying such a timber along a path not three feet wide among masses of loose logs. He had to plant his fore feet upon the logs and thus walk a considerable distance. He looked as if he were walking upon his hind legs. The corner of a frail little bamboo hut stood in his way. He lifted the log over the roof and bent his body so that his sides gently scraped the corner of the house and did not shake it. A hundredth part of his weight would have caused it to topple from its pile foundations.

A LOG-LIFTING ELEPHANT.