2-981-955 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Tame Elephants hunting a Wild Elephant, from a sketch by one of our special artists in India, 1876. Royal visit by the future King Edward VII. '...his Royal Highness rode forth with a pack of tame elephants to see the mode of fighting and capturing wild ones. There is nothing which so pleases a captive beast of this kind as to batter one of his free brethren into such a state of stupidity and weakness that he is unable to frustrate the arts of the snarer who slips the rope and chain round his legs and leads him into servitude. In Nepaul this science is practised in perfection. There are certain elephants of great strength [and] courage...which are kept for the purpose of fighting and catching their species...in the course of the night and early morning the herd, fourteen in all, were brought in captive, and are now fastened up to undergo training and taming, one little creature being reduced to milk diet by hand'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.