3-011-925 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mode of capturing wild elephants in Ceylon: herd of wild elephants, 1864. Engraving of a photograph '...of the great elephant-catching expedition to a place called Ebbewellepittia...so as to afford the utmost sport and entertainment to their European visitors...the Cingalese huntsmen were keeping up a ring of watch-fires...all round the herd of wild elephants in the neighbouring forest. Sometimes an alarm would be raised when the noble beasts turned and seemed about to break through the circle at any particular point; the men would drive them back with shouts and noise of firing guns...The first elephant which got into the kraal, having drunk too greedily of the pool after being deprived of water for so many days, fell down and died...On the next morning...the interior of the kraal presented a curious scene. The thirsty and famished animals were pacing restlessly to and fro in the tank, or pond, which their feet had churned into a fetid mass of black mud, with the dead elephant lying in the midst. They looked a complete picture of woe and despair. Sometimes one would step to heap the mud over his head and buck in a manner expressive of hopeless misery. Sometimes one would stroke with his trunk the body of his prostrate comrade'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.