They are so old that they don't seem to belong to the twentieth century
at all. Their long trunks, their huge shapes, all seem part of the
remote past. They are just the remnants of a breed that once was great.

Long and long ago, when the world was very young indeed, when the
mountains were new, and before the descent of the great glaciers taught
the meaning of cold, they were the rulers of the earth, but they have
been conquered in the struggle for existence. Their great cousins, the
mastodon and the mammoth, are completely gone, and their own tribe can
now be numbered by thousands.

But because they have been so long upon the earth, because they have
wealth of experience beyond all other creatures, they seem like
venerable sages in a world of children. They are like the last veterans
of an old war, who can remember scenes and faces that all others have
forgotten.

Far in a remote section of British India, in a strange, wild province
called Burma, Muztagh was born. And although he was born in captivity,
the property of a mahout, in his first hour he heard the far-off call
of the wild elephants in the jungle.

The Burmans, just like the other people of India, always watch the first
hour of a baby's life very closely. They know that always some incident
will occur that will point, as a weather-vane points in the wind, to the
baby's future. Often they have to call a man versed in magic to
interpret, but sometimes the prophecy is quite self-evident. No one
knows whether or not it works the same with baby elephants, but
certainly this wild, far-carrying call, not to be imitated by any living
voice, did seem a token and an omen in the life of Muztagh. And it is a
curious fact that the little baby lifted his ears at the sound and
rocked back and forth on his pillar legs.

Of all the places in the great world, only a few remain wherein a
captive elephant hears the call of his wild brethren at birth. Muztagh's
birthplace lies around the corner of the Bay of Bengal, not far from the
watershed of the Irawadi, almost north of Java. It is strange and wild
and dark beyond the power of words to tell. There are great dark
forests, unknown, slow-moving rivers, and jungles silent and dark and
impenetrable.

Little Muztagh weighed a flat two hundred pounds at birth. But this was
not the queerest thing about him. Elephant babies, although usually
weighing not more than one hundred and eighty, often touch two hundred.
The queeres