Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1891 — SHIPPING A BIG SHOW. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SHIPPING A BIG SHOW.

CERTAINLY OLD NOAH’S JOB WAS NO PICNIC. BUBonlties of Embarking Animals Today that Did Not Exist Before the Deluge—Scenes Among the Animals on the Steamship Monowal. A Latter-Day Noah’s Ark. An old circus man says that Noah's Job was certainly no picnic, an! that if the eminent j atriarch had spent one year in the < ireus business ho would never have taken tho contract of running the ark at all, but would have Jnst laid down in his barn and waited for the deluge to come and diown him A big menagerie and circus with all the attending paraphernalia recently ■hipped from San Francisco to Australia. They sailed on a trip more protracted and perilous than that ever

dreamed of by Noah Elephants, tigers, hippopotami, lions, horses, downs, riders and all—the whole outfit crowded together in one ship of the tea; tents, monkeys, ehar.ots and every oilier item of the show adrift i n the broad Pacific Ocean. Never was such a job of embarkation experienced at tho Oceanic dock, says the San Francisco Examiner; never again do tho ’longshoremen Of this port hope to ship a cargo of wild animals to Australia Imagine a b g, wide, yawning, covered dock, with iis millions of cubic feet, •imply aching to be overcrowded. Imagine the flooring of that dock simply packed with a traveling show and you will have some faint idea of what the Oceanic dock looked like. In the good old days when Noah went Into the ship-building business tho job of filling an ark with a complete, if heterogeneous, collection of mammalia of both sexes seems to have been a task of consummate easiness. Anyhow Genesis says nothing about its dilticu ty. and if any hitch occurred —any strike among the ’longshoremen, or any of that sort of bnsiness —Genesis would have recorded It As it was the animals went aboard two by two, or lour by tour as the case happened to be, etc When the job of loading began all was easy as a marriage bell. There were a number of obstreperous brutes, to bo Enre, and a certain number of ail too willing ones. The jaguars, for instance, howled mournfudy when they found that they were to bo hoisted aboard the steamer, the monkeys simply shrieked with delight They exemplified two extremes—the one demonstrated grief, the Other joy—and neither cared for either. There was only one happy medium and that was the hay, and that hay came aboard in tons and carloads, ton; upon lons of grass and oate i hay, and tons npon tons of wheat a :d crushed barley.

One cou’d see the groat ship sink in the j water as wagon-load after wagon-load of the bal<4 forage was swung aboard on the creaking derrick; aud then still lower in the water she ,-ank as they hoisted on the'seats, t'.e tent poles, the hurdles, thfe'StayS. and tho canvas. For in the hoggin ng the men did nothing but lead on the mechanical contrivances of the show: and the embarkation of the horses and wild animals was delayed until the last moment. Koah had no tents or things to load on the ark, and thereby saved a great deal of trouble; but th-re are men in the circus who contend that, tents or no tents, if Koah had to hate shipped one African elephant, the,ark would not' have teen started unjo;*j»js Very day. On Tuesday the work began. Early in the morning they piled the dock with seemingly usfeiess piles of lumber, and still more ( teelfess wagon-trees and wheels Latbr on in the day they began to cart in stain and hay by the carload, and still ?»#»’ great big wagons eamo with hulking-sides of beef — great dripping carcasses' to stow tn the big re-frigerators—meat-flesh for the carnivora to feed upon during theiryisaprisonment aboard ship Mfftile traversing the broad Pacific Ocean 4 Many of th“ animals will die before they reach Australia. The wild beasts Of the Indian and African jungles can but little brook raptivity, and the close confinement bf a traveling cage aboard an ocean finer will knock the spir t and the life out of many at them. Nevertheless, the experiment of transportation was tried years ago, and proved a big success, and what matters a Jaguar or a tiger or a jion more or less, If the main percentage of the show once safely reaches Australia . ■'» m f_ They have tj’ooer ways, those incarcerated denizens of foreign wildernesses. They live a while and struggle,, then they get paralysis and die -- > 4., *. First they fight and starve, then they svlk.Hd feed, then thgr giwl and grow aick, then toey get paralyzed. -Thfty run •p aud down and do aWJdown and twi-t to tteir circumscribed cagea One day

| the keeper notices that one of them Is | ! lazy, ho st.rs him up; the animal is j lame Next day he is more lame, and, | oh! so lazy. Next day he is lazier still, 1

and won't even jump to his food. In a , couple of days the truth comes out Ho crawls to the door on his forelegs, tho hindquarters dragging an inert weight i behind. Tho forest ranger has sucI cumb: d to the paralysis of captivity. He ; is marked to-die. If ho cost a lot they | try to nurse him back to hea tli. If ho did not—why, pish! Heave him o er- ! board at once and have more room for ! the liv.ng. Its not nice to bo an exhibit in an | American circus en route for Austra la. When Noah was running the animal j business the animals were d cilo ajid tractable, and no especial anangementt had to be entered into for tl eir shipment. Nowadays, however, tho averago star beast is out for human lives and ho cannot be driven abroad ship with impunity. There ore it was that elaborate precautions had to be taken in loading. I To begin with, each den was hauled i up the dock pretty much tho same as tho dens are hauled along the main j streets on the day that a circus comes to ; town Hut the cages lacked vivacity, so ] to speak; they lacked the golden glamour of a swell triumphal entry, and tho gold and the tinsel were missing No gilt-edged quo >n of the Irppodrome bestrode tho haughty hippopotamus, nor did some bespangled son of the torrid Indies surmount tho elephant's nock. The gilt-edged queen was absent, tho bespangled son of llindostan wore overai s and a jumper at SI. 50 per suit. He did not look half so pretty as he did in tinsel, and therefore not half so useful: but he got thero just the same—yanked i the pachyderms In the neck with the

business that looks like a boathook, hit him on the trunk, swore like a drunken trooper and, generally speaking, discharged his lawful duties and obligations like a gentleman and a scholar. Whi n lions and tigers and similar brutes are looked up in cage wagous they are as easy to handle as lumber. The wagon is rol od up to tho odge of tho wharf, tho circus hands and longshoremen sling ropes under ts body and hitch it on to tho hook that swings from the big derrick attached to the mainmast 'll hen tho stovi d re blows a whistle, and the man at the donkey engine opens tho throttle valve and that cage wagon goes floating tip in the air with all the sweet simp icity of a can-vas-back duck. \\ hen it gets about si t inches above the wharf the s ariug ceases for a moment. The circus hands removo the wheels from the wagon, and pile them in a heap on one side. Then tho stevedore whistles again, tho tackle creaks, the big cage creops upward, tho beasts inside it grunt tliolr disapproval —they are too scared to oar—and then, witli a sweep through the circumambient atmosphere, they are launched on the deck of tho steamer. They did not crowd the big dens down into the dark hold: they stowol them along the deck. All the after deck is crowded with cages of animals. There was no trouble in embarking tho wilder animals and the horses—sleek and lovely animals —were docile and tractable when pla-ed in tho open box prepared for them, and hoisted one by one from tho wharf-side and lowered into the hold. There they were placed in little sta ls. the same as ordinary stables It was in shipping the elephants, though, that the fun for the populace and the trouble for tho circus men arose. . The elephant stands pre eminently the most sagacious among the entire brute creation; lie may, also, when ho gets his “mad” up, be classified among the most contrary. Your average Asiatic elephant, however, the tellow with the curly ears, seldom or never gets mad.

His African cousin, the chap with the great flapping ears that look as if they could listen to a thousand orchestras at one time and hunger to listen to more, is never happy unless be Is kicking against a grievance. Max was the name of tho star African elephant In this shipment.

Max had watched his old pal Dick, tho hippopotamus being shipped, and he pitied Dick, and trumpeted out his sympathy, when Dick got that tired feeling

and yawned like a rusty thunderbolt. Thou they tried to per-uado .Va c to go and join the amphibious beast, but Max know better.

America was good enough for Max; ho did not want any antipodes in his They got Dutch, the big Asiatic ele-

pliant, to march up to the land end of the dock with him, and Dutch coaxed him like a brother. Out on tho street way a big derrick had beon hung, and pendent therefrom was a big square box, all bound with thick bars of iron The object entertained by tho show people was to coix Max into that box and hoist him on shipboard. The object

entertained by Max was to thwart and hinder thc>ir plans to the best of his capacities and understanding. They coaxed on the monster with honeyed words and pickaxis; then they jabbed him on the north end with marlin spikes and boathooks, but all Max did was to pick up a wisp of hay with his trunk, fan himself therewith lor a moment, and then chuck it upon his shoulder to keep the flies off. They explained the matter to Dutch and Dutch entered into the scheme to delude his African brother, and with true Asiatic duplicity entered the box himsolf, twirled around, .snorted in b.iss and made believe that that box was a small terrestrial paradise. Max watched his demonstration with unmoved dignity, and when Dutch came out and begged him (Max) to sample the delights of the box, tho African just winked, but did nothing. Then the men tried pickaxes and things again, but it was ail no use. Max seemed to enjoy a clip from a pickax in in the rear: anyhow he waltzed around in uncontrolled happiness, but would not go near the box. A crowd gathered, but Max did not mind. Cue grows accustomed to crowds in the show busiuesa The men got tired; so did Dutch, and eventually they asked the Asiatic to hustle his pal into the pen. Then the tun began. Dutch tried to get behind Max and shove him bodily with his tusks; Max dodged Dutch like a schoolboy. Never was seen such an instance of animal sagacity. The big Asian trying to force the African without hurting him, the Alrican doing his best to avoid the Asian in a determined but good-natured way. All this- time Queen, the largest elephant in the lot, was standing down on the farther end of the dock eating peanuts. When the superintendent got tired of Max’s antics he roared down to her: “Come up here, Queen!” Queen waved her trunk and wagged her tail, then solemnly stalked up the dock. “Hurry up. there!” and as he spoke the b!g beast broke into a jog-trot, and

her big, loose skin flapped on her sides like wet clothes on a living skeleton. -Shove in Max! Help Dutch!” In a second Queen had her tmks against Mat’s flanks, in ha'f a minute she had him pinned up against tho inside of the box and was holding him there while Dutch hustled around to close the big door. When Dutch had jammed to the door and was holding ft safe Queen withdrew, hit Dutch a smack with her trunk on the shoulder and stalked down to her t eanuts once more. Max is shut out ftom America. Five minutes more little Topsy, tho African lady elephant, is locked under the hatches. otill a few more minutes and Dig Dutch joins her. Last of ail Queen comes and stalks into the box. The tackle stra ns and creaks, the big pen rises upward, a great gray trunk lifts itself above the sides add trumpets an an revoir. Then down it disappears through the fore hatch, and the crowd on tho deck watches it sinking and sinking into the darkness of the lower hold. A whist'e Tho creaking stops. Another whistle and an idle hook swings upon the end of tho tacklo. The labors of the modern Noah are ended. The animals are all aboard tho ark.

'TWEEN-DECKS PASSENGERS.

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS GETS "THAT TIRE FEELING."

QUEEN AND DUTCH HELP TO INCARCERATE THEIR COMBADE.

ASCENDING TO THE DECK.

TRUMPETING A FOND FAREWELL.

AN UNWILLING EMIGRANT.

DICK INSPECTING HIS NEW QUARTERS.