doubt related the strange situation in which he left his family and friends, and the inexplicable treatment under which he saw them labouring.

At one time three prodigious elephants ran up to the end of the narrow passage, pressing one after another, crashing the intervening bars, and shaking the whole structure from the foundation. But the activity of the hunters in separating them by new rollers lashed together with ropes, and the dexterity of the spearmen in mounting the toil, and penetrating their foreheads, prevented the terrible effects which, otherwise, might have followed the strength and fury of those enraged animals.

Notwithstanding all the care that is taken, accidents sometimes happen. One man had the misfortune to tumble down into the passage, and was instantly trampled to death under the feet of the elephant, in restraining whose anger he had been so actively engaged.

When the elephants find themselves so closely immured, they roar tremendously, and exert all the strength which they have room to use to regain their freedom; and were it not for the pressure of their imprisonment, they have power sufficient to shatter any fence that could be formed.

Their plaintive cries have all the expressions of sorrow, rage, resentment, and despair. Often, after they are bound to the trees and stakes, in the forest set apart for their reception, finding every effort ineffectual even to disengage a

single limb, their hollow eyes fill with tears, and their countenance wears an aspect of the deepest melancholy. The females, from natural causes, feel the oppression of the yoke with keener sensibility, and more frequently fall a sacrifice in the struggle.

At present three hundred men are employed in guarding the snare, and removing and securing the captured elephants: and, although the Cingalese are very expert in these operations, from sun-rise to sun-set the first day, they carried away only twenty. The business, however, might be accelerated by adding another discharging passage, a greater number of hands, and more tame elephants.

The grandeur of the sight here displayed seems princically to proceed from the crowd of elephants assembled in so confined a compass, the enormous size of those noble quadrupeds, the danger of subduing them, and the striking specimen which it affords of the wonders that can be accomplished by human genius. No description, no engraving, can produce the singular impressions which proceed from the original spectacle. Even a just conception of so magnificent a sight cannot be conveyed by representing the whole process in one view. But a ground plan of it may be laid down on a regular scale, illustrated by a set of beautiful drawings exhibiting the various scenes as they successively occur. The part of the snare where the elephants are taken out, and the garden where they are tied up, form,

Drawn by J. Cordiner

each, subjects for many paintings. Some of these have been ably executed by the pencil of Joseph Jonville, esq. late surveyor general and naturalist in Ceylon.

The plate which accompanies this chapter probably contains as much as could easily be comprised within such confined dimensions. It may assist in affording a slight idea of the method of ensnaring elephants, to strangers who have never witnessed the scene; but will prove more effectual in calling the particulars to the recollection of those persons who have been spectators of the curious sight.

An elephant is often tamed in eight days, but if he be obstinate, the business cannot be accomplished in less than two months. By seeing men regularly supply him with grateful nourishment, his first abhorrence of the human species gradually diminishes: he soon gains a thorough knowledge of his keeper, and at last follows his commands with the most implicit obedience. At the commencement of their captivity water is carried to them in large vessels, but, after a few days, they are regularly loosed from their confinement, and with the assistance of their tame brethren conducted to a fountain.

After they are sufficiently docile, they are marched round to Jaffnapatam, a distance of upwards of three hundred miles, and nearly half the circumference of the island, where they are sold by public auction, and thence exported to the

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