Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1874 — Elephant Laborers. [ARTICLE]

Elephant Laborers.

It would be too long to relate all the uses to which elephants are applied in Burmah. Let us watch them at work among the wood-yards where the trunks of tickwood trees, which come floating down the river, are piled. Every work-ing-elephant is mounted by a driver called a “comae,” whose principal business is rather to excite the animal than to direct it. In the season when the roads are cut the trunks come down the river to the bar much faster than they can be disposed of in the saw-mills, and they accumulate in vast quantities all along the banks. It is necessary, therefore, to drag the trees out of the water and arrange them in piles until such time as they can be cut up. There are only three sorts of piles, varying with the size of the trees. First an elephant in the water clears the logs from the mass and ranges them one by one upon the river bank. He carefully examines the chaos of logs and proceeds with tusks and trunk to disengage the tree he has selected and which he intends to carry to land. As soon as the tree is placed on the bank another elephant is harnessed to it and drags it to the wood-yard,where he leaves it. Two other elephants now come up, and one of them takes one end of the log upon his trunk and drags it to tne pile upon which, inyiew of its size, it ought to be placed, while his companion assists him by pushing the log with all his might. As soon as they reach the proper pile the first elephant lifts the top of the log upon the pile, then he forms a kind cf ring around the log with his trunk, while the other with a vigorous blow of his head shoots* the log into its place. The intelligence displayed by these animals is almost incredible, and we should scarcely have believed it if we had not seen their movements as described above.— Revue des Deux Mondes.