Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1905 — An Eleplant Story. [ARTICLE]

An Eleplant Story.

A queer elephant yarn is told in the Japan Chronicle by the captain of a trading steamer. On one occasion he had on board a cargo of forty elephants. The ship was at anchor in a calm sea, but began to roll violently. The captain investigated and learned that the elephants had in some way found that by swaying to and fro all together a rocking motion was produced that seemed to please them immensely. So the great heads and bodies rolled and swung in unison until the steamer, which had no other cargo and rode light, was in Imminent danger of rolling clean over. The attendants were hurried down into the hold and, after a great deal of shouting and thumping, managed to stop their dangerous amusement. Jules Verne tells as a fiction of the sinking of a ship in that way, and the question is. Has some one in Japan been reading Verne or was the novelist’s fancy justified by a real experience?