l way, fourteen days are sufficient to reduce the animals to
perfect obedience. During this time, they are fed daily with cocoa-nut
leaves, of which they are excessively fond, and are conducted to the
water by the tame females. In a short time, they become accustomed to
the voice of their keeper, and at last quietly resign their freedom,
and great energies, to the dominion of man.

The mode employed by the Africans, to take elephants alive, is by pits.
Pliny, whose accounts were in general correct, mentions that, when one
of the herd happened to fall into this snare, his companions would
throw branches of trees and masses of earth into the pit, with the
intention of raising the bottom, so that the animal might effect his
escape. Although this appears to be a species of reasoning hardly to be
expected from an animal, yet it has in a great measure been confirmed
by Mr. Pringle, who says,--"In the year 1821, during one of my
excursions in the interior of the Cape Colony, I happened to spend a
few days at the Moravian missionary settlement of Enon, or White River.
This place is situated in a wild but beautiful valley, near the foot of
the Zuurberg Mountains, in the district of Uiterhage, and is surrounded
on every side by extensive forests of evergreens, in which numerous
herds of elephants still find food and shelter.

"From having been frequently hunted by the Boors and Hottentots, these
animals are become so shy as scarcely ever to be seen during the day,
except amongst the most remote and inaccessible ravines and jungles;
but in the night time they frequently issue forth in large troops, and
range, in search of food, through the inhabited farms in the White
River valley; and on such occasions they sometimes revenge the wrongs
of their race upon the settlers who have taken possession of their
ancient haunts, by pulling up fruit-trees, treading down gardens and
cornfields, breaking their ploughs, wagons, and so forth. I do not
mean, however, to affirm, that the elephants really do all this
mischief from feelings of revenge, or with the direct intention of
annoying their human persecutors. They pull up the trees, probably,
because they want to browse on their soft roots; and they demolish the
agricultural implements merely because they happen to be in their way.

"But what I am now about to state assuredly indicates no ordinary
intelligence. A few days before my arrival at Enon, a troop of
elephants came down, one dark a