on issuing from a woody defile, in the midst of a numerous herd. None of the elephants, indeed, were very close to them, but were scattered in groups over the bottom and sides of a valley, two or three miles in length. Some were browsing on the juicy spekboom, with which the skirts of the hills on each side were fringed; others were busy among the young mimosas and evergreens with which the meadows were sprinkled. As the party cautiously proceeded, some of the groups came more distinctly into view. These, in many instances, appeared to be separate families, consisting of the male, female, and young of different sizes. The gigantic proportions of the chief leaders, and their calm and stately tranquillity of deportment became more and more striking, as the band of about a dozen horsemen, including Hottentots, advanced; but the elephants seemed either not to observe, or to disregard the march of the travellers down the valley. As they rode along leisurely through a meadow, thickly studded over with clumps of tall evergreens, they suddenly came upon the enormous male, which they conjectured to be at least fourteen feet high, right in their path, and within a hundred paces. The Hottentots, in their broken Dutch, whispered that he was een gruwzaam karl-bania', bania' groot, which, according to the interpretation of one of them, signifies a "hugeous terrible fellow, plenty, plenty big."

The great grewsome carle did not, however, seem to notice them ; for the wind was brisk, and they stood to leeward of him, so that he was not warned by his senses of smelling and hearing. When, however, they turned off at a gallop, making a circuit through the bushes to avoid collision with him, he was startled by the sound of the horses' feet, and turned towards them menacingly, erecting his enormous ears, and raising his trunk as if about to charge. Fortunately for the party, however, he remained on the spot, looking after them, in front of two or three females, and as many young ones, which had hastily crowded up behind from the bank of the river, as if to claim his protection.

Such is the portrait of an elephant in a state of nature. How different is its bearing when it has become subjected to man, whose hand and head subdue all living things, however enormous, to his will. The greatest of terrestrial animals, conscious as it is of enormous strength, obeys all his behests for good or for evil; stalking, stately and huge in the solemn procession, proud of its gorgeous trappings; amusing him with unwieldy, but welladjusted gambols, and clever tricks; or "barded from counter to tail," with steel-clad trunk and tusks armed with poisoned daggers, dealing destruction in war, and trampling down masses of men, as if they were no more than an army of locusts.

ELEPHANTS.

PART II.

"Let them show their features in war."

MACPHERSON.

THAT the obedient sagacity of an animal endowed with such enormous strength, should have led the strategist to employ the elephant as an agent, and that such agency should, at first, have been overwhelming, was to be expected.

In the early periods, the art of war was, in a great degree, reduced to a trial of physical strength, and victory, for the most part, was the reward of personal valour. The general, as well as the common soldier, fought hand to hand; and the effect of the first sight of a well-appointed troop of elephants, when opposed to ancient cavalry and infantry, may well have turned the tide of battle.

Although the triumphant Liber Pater is stated to have been the first to yoke those of India to his car, the ambushed elephants of King Amoræus that put to flight the horsemen of Cyrus in his expedition against the Derbices, appear to have been the earliest on record actually engaged. The ancient Indian monarchs, if we are to believe Pliny and others, numbered thousands of these living mountains among their standing armies; and the story told by Diodorus of the stratagem of the Assyrian Queen, when, weary of the want of excitement attendant upon a long peace, she languished again for conquest, shows in what consideration these animals were held as an arm of war. India was her object ; but then what was to be done for elephants? Stabrobates, the king against whom her expedition was to be directed, possessed, besides his other almost countless forces, numbers of these huge animals, well accoutred for the field.

Semiramis, therefore, caused three hundred thousand black oxen to be slaughtered, and of the skins, sewn together and

stuffed with straw, her mechanics formed artificial elephants: there was a man to direct, and a camel to carry each of them, so that at a distance they might well pass for living beasts. The workmen laboured in a secret place, walled round and guarded, so that no hint of what was passing within should transpire; and when all was finished, the horses of her army were familiarised with the machines, as the knight reconciled his horse and dogs to the presence of the real Rhodian dragon, by teaching them to fight the artificial model. Her troops, which were assembled in Bactria, amounted, according to Ctesias, to three millions of infantry, two hundred thousand cavalry, a hundred thousand warchariots, and a hundred thousand soldiers, armed with very long swords, mounted on camels. With these, the mock-elephants, and two thousand boats so contrived that they could be taken to pieces and reconstructed, and which were transported on the backs of camels, Semiramis took the field.

On his side, Stabrobates, who had heard of these warlike preparations, was not idle; he increased his army in every branch, and summoned all his resources to outdo Semiramis. And though he does not seem to have been in the secret of the stuffed machines, he augmented the number of his real elephants, and furnished them so completely with offensive and defensive armour, that it seemed impossible to resist them. He then sent ambassadors to the queen, upbraiding her with commencing an unprovoked war; wrote to her some rather strong epistles, in which he touched not very politely on her private habits, and finished by informing her that if he caught her, she should be crucified; whereat the queen smiled, proceeded to the Indus, where the king's fleet lay, sank a thousand of his vessels, and took a great number of captives. Stabrobates feigned a panic and fled; the feint took: Semiramis crossed the river and pursued the Indians with the whole of her forces, except eighty thousand men left to guard the bridge.

In her front Semiramis placed her artificial elephants; and when the amazed scouts carried to the king the news of the multitude of those beasts that protected her line, every one looked on his neighbour, and enquired in surprise, from what source the Assyrians could have been supplied with such numbers? Stabrobates now, in his turn, began to repent his retreat, and great must have been his comfort when the deserters for they as usual brought the information-from the queen's army enlightened him as to the true state of the case.

Both were now confident, the queen still believing that the cheat was undiscovered, and both marched to the attack. The cavalry and chariots formed the Indian van, and the horses taking

the stuffed machines, which were placed before the Assyrian main body, at a distance, for real elephants, advanced boldly enough. As they came nearer, the scene was changed, the horses were no longer deluded, but found themselves opposed to monstrous shapes, the sight and smell of which were equally strange to them: they kicked, they plunged, they reared; some threw their riders, whilst others madly carried them among the enemy, who fell upon them, and drove them in confusion back upon their own main body.

Stabrobates was again surprised; but he brought up his infantry headed by his elephants, the king himself commanding in the right wing, mounted on a stately beast, and fiercely charged the queen, who was opposite to him. The poor made-up elephants behaved nobly, but soon gave way before the massive weight of the real war-brutes, who were not to be taken in by the shredded and patched appearance of their leathern opponents, and a miserable slaughter of the queen's troops ensued. The field was covered with the torn and trampled slain, the king's elephants hurling some high into the air with their trunks, goring, rending, and tossing others with their tusks, treading down whole ranks of men, and destroying all before them. The Assyrians could no longer stand before such frightful devastation, and their whole army fled with their queen, whose arm had been pierced by the Indian king's own arrow, and her shoulder by one of his darts: but the fleetness of her horse saved her life.

Long afterwards, we find elephants among the opponents of Alexander, who encountered them before he passed the Indus ; for, at the battle of Gaugamela, or Arbela, as the field is usually termed, where the power of Darius fell before the irresistible Macedonian phalanx, all the elephants of the Persian appear to have been taken. As he marched on Susa, twelve elephants, brought from India by Darius, were among the magnificent gifts presented to Alexander by the governor of the province. His victorious army seized, on the bank of the Indus, some of these beasts from the affrighted natives, who fled at his approach.

The Indus passed, the conquerer marched unchecked till the broad and rapid Hydaspes crossed his path, and he beheld, on the opposite bank, Porus and all his host, presenting a wall of flesh and steel beyond its waves. Familiarised as the Greeks had been to the sight of the beasts, the prodigious size and enormous number of the Indian king's elephants, their horrible roarings, as, provoked by their keepers, they menaced the invaders, his multitudinous and well-appointed army, with the war-chariots and the horsemen thereof, made them pause. The sun rose and set again and again; and there stood the Macedonian and the Indian

gazing at each other across that wild water. There, too, stood the elephants on the watch: every stratagem of the wily Greek to effect a passage had hitherto been baffled, and to attempt it openly, in the face of those threatening living bulwarks, was to court destruction; for the danger apprehended was, that the horses, seized with terror as they neared the elephants, would ildly leap from the boats into the rolling river. Thus passed several days. At length the watch of the Indians was relaxed. The great Greek Captain made a diversion with a part of his army, that drew off the enemy, and the main body of the Macedonians crossed and stood safely on the ground so lately occupied by the elephants.

In

But there was yet a terrible struggle to be sustained. Porus had drawn up his army upon a firm and sandy plain, offering the best ground for the operations of his chariots and cavalry. front stood the war-elephants, like towers, a hundred feet apart, to cover the infantry and paralyse the Grecian horse with fear. Other huge elephants bearing large wooden towers, full of armed men, flanked each wing. On the right and left the foot were protected by the horse, and the horse by the chariots in their front. The colossal Porus himself was borne upon an elephant towering far above the rest of his fellows.

Alexander gazed at this imposing and glorious array with stern delight. He burst out into a joyous exclamation, that he had at last before him a danger worthy of the greatness of his soul.

The signal was given. Onward rushed the long levelled pikes of the phalanx, whilst the rapid charges of the cavalry, and the incessant storm of arrows from the light-armed Thracian bowmen, added to the panic that began to spread among the Indians. Still the elephants stood firm, trampling down the infantry like grasshoppers, or seizing the armed Greeks in their trunks, and delivering them to the tender mercies of their governors. The day was waning, but not the battle, which was still doubtful, when the Macedonians saw that their only chance was to turn all their strength upon these huge and stubborn enemies. Then was the

crashing axe driven deep into their enormous legs, their trunks were lopped with scythe-like weapons,-and, while the infantry were thus at work upon them, the Greek cavalry surrounded them. The enraged, mutilated, and hemmed-in beasts dealt destruction to friend and foe, and, after a carnage to which modern battles offer scarcely any parallel, the wounded and wearied elephants which had not yet dropped, but had no longer strength to push against the masses that opposed them, first stood still, uttering hideous cries, and then staggered out of the fight.