3-011-926 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mode of capturing wild elephants in Ceylon: an elephant noosed, 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 first elephant noosed was a fine young animal of two years of age...a noose was adroitly slipped round one of his hind legs. Finding himself a captive, after a few efforts to break the cord, he threw himself on the ground with a loud cry...after a vigorous resistance he was bound by three of his legs to a tree and firmly secured. Often the unfortunate beast made frantic efforts to regain his liberty; sometimes trying to tear away the cords with his trunk, sometimes pulling with all his might against the relentless fetters; occasionally, in utter despair, he would dash himself upon the ground, uttering piteous cries to his dam, who stood close by looking on in sulky silence and expressing her maternal sorrow by heaping dust upon her head. To describe the noosing of one elephant is to describe the noosing of all. In every case there was the same unavailing resistance, the same ultimate exhaustion'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.