Jungle Joe

Front matter

Books by Clarence HawkesCloth. Illustrated. Jackets in Colors

Dapples of the Circus

The Story of a Shetland Pony

Introduction

It would be a safe guess that ninety-nine per cent. of the children in our United States love and worship the American Circus, and well they may, for it is an American institution, developed by that great American genius, Mr. P. T. Barnum.

Even the kings and queens of Europe, who are supposed to see everything that is worth while, had never seen the American Circus until Mr. Barnum took his show across the Atlantic Ocean and exhibited in Europe.

One of the pleasant pictures of spring-time is that of an excited group of children, gathered about the latest circus poster. They stand with mouth agape, and eyes stretched wide open, while with their hands they gesticulate, trying vainly to express something of the mystery and wonder described upon the bill-board.

If the American circus is the delight of all the children and many of their elders as well, then the elephant is the very centre and circumference of the whole show. He is the chief figure in that great glittering pageant, the street parade. If the children feel strange thrills at the sound of the stirring circus bands, if they gaze in wonderment at the strange people in the parade, if their spinal columns feel delicious thrills of fear at the cages of wild animals, yet it is reserved for the elephants to register perfect ecstasy in the childish heart. The elephant is mighty, he steps with such stately tread, and there is such an air of mystery about his driver that he at onee strikes twelve in the ehildish mind. From the elephants, the parade gradually fades away to the vanishing point.

This being the case, is it not wise to preface this book with a short sketch of the elephant family, especially as there will be some important facts included in this introduction which will not be touched upon in the main portion of the story?

The elephant family has been in the past very important, and a very large family. There are about fourteen distinct species found in fossils and in prehistoric rocks. But now the family has dwindled to two species: the African and the Asiatic elephant.

Of these, the African is slightly the larger and much the more untamable. There are very few cases of African ele- phants fully domesticated. Jumbo, so long loved and admired by children, was the notable exception. The African elephant is usually rather taller and more rangy than the Asiatic, and his tusks are heavier. Also his ears are much larger, sometimes measuring three and a half feet in length by two and a half in width. Aside from these differences, the two living species of the elephant are quite alike. But the Asiatic elephant is the one we see in circuses and zoos.

There was another mighty elephant that lived upon the earth with primeval man, and is most interesting because of that fact. He was called the mammoth. A fine specimen of this mighty elephant was found a few years ago in Siberia frozen into a crevice in a glacier. He was so well preserved that the tissues of his flesh were all intact, and even his hair was well preserved.

This mighty elephant was two or three feet taller than the very largest elephants upon the earth to-day, and he probably weighed a half more. So that would make him thirteen or fourteen feet high and weighing perhaps ten tons. Truly a huge beast.

The other species most commonly found in fossils and about which we hear the most is the mastodon, that was even larger than the mammoth.

So, as you see, all the members of this family have been veritable giants.

The elephant is very long-lived, even in these days, living from seventy-five to one hundred and thirty years. No one knows how long his life might have been in the prehistoric ages.

He goes back to a very distant date in the history of man. Elephants were used in India in repelling the attacks of Alexander the Great.

Towers which contained thirty or forty bowmen were mounted upon the elephants' backs. But these great animals are rather timid in some ways, so they often bolted in battle and did their friends quite as much damage as they did their enemies.

Hannibal used elephants in his army which crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps mountains and so marched down into italy and attacked imperial Rome. The elephant, notwithstanding his size, is very sure-footed and a very good mountain-climber. This is because they formerly lived much farther north than they do now. So we see that the elephant was formerly domesticated and that he went into battle with his master. But, except in India, the art of capturing and training elephants seems to have been lost from about the time of the Christian Era till within the last century, when the elephant again became subservient to man.

The fact that the elephant once lived much farther north accounts in part for the theory that he was formerly covered with hair, but his living in the tropics has caused him to discard it as unnecessary.

This is probably why a baby elephant is born covered with a fine woolly hair, which he sheds when he is a few months old, and it never returns.

The female elephant gives birth to a baby elephant every three years after she is fifteen years old. This occurs until she is seventy-five, when she ceases to bear young. This would make the average female elephant the mother of from fifteen to twenty elephants.

The elephant does not gain his full size and weight until he is about twenty-five. When he is born, he is three feet high and weighs two hundred pounds. After that he grows an inch a month until he is five years old. Then the growth is slower.

The strangest of all the elephant's peculiar organs is his trunk, which one scientist says contains forty thousand muscles. Certain it is that he can use it in many ways. It is so powerful that he can lift hundreds of pounds of weight with it, and so delicate that he can pick up a pin from the floor. It is by means of the trunk that the elephant drinks. He can also suck in much more water than he wants for his immediate use and store it up in his water-stomach, which in a full grown elephant holds ten gallons. This makes him a good traveller in waste places where water is not plenty. If he has a mind to, he can draw the water from his stomach into his trunk at any time, and take a drink, or even squirt it over himself, thus taking a shower-bath. But he does not usually waste the extra water which he has stored up in that way.

The elephant's tusks are formed of dentine, a very valuable tooth-covering. They are merely greatly elongated upper teeth, which in some cases curve down and then up at an angle of forty-five degrees. These tusks, which form the ivory that man prizes so highly, in the case of the African elephant often weigh two hundred pounds.

The ivory in a large set of tusks is worth hundreds of dollars, and sometimes even one or two thousand dollars. So the tuskers, as they are called, which are the bulls with the largest tusks, are usually shot as soon as they are captured. This is for two reasons. First, they are more valuable for ivory than for show purposes, and second, they are often rather hard to break, being stubborn.

Quite frequently a male elephant becomes estranged from the herd. He lives by himself and shuns the rest of the elephants. After a time, he becomes very morose and is a dangerous animal for a hunter to meet. Such an elephant is called a rogue.

The elephant has probably always been tamed in India where he is a sacred animal. The white elephant, especially, is regarded with great veneration. Also the twenty-toed elephant brings a fabulous price among the Indian princes. The usual complement of toes for the elephant is eighteen.

There was one white elephant in India many centuries ago which was so highly prized that two rival kingdoms got to waging war over him, and this war lasted for five generations of kings and cost thousands of lives.

The most dangerous thing about the elephant is his liability to must. This is a strange disease to which he is subject, and which makes him mad while it lasts. But its coming can be detected if the elephant-keeper is careful, so trouble can always be avoided. In the cheek-bones of the elephant there are two small holes from which flows a slight secretion. When the elephant is about to be taken with must, this vent gives off a fluid and also a musty odor. The elephant-keeper should each day make an inspection of this vent with a straw. If he discovers the musty smell, he should at once take preventive measures.

If the elephant is immediately hobbled, and then chained up he can do no damage. Usually the attack will pass after a while. But occasionally an elephant becomes so violent that he has to be shot.

The elephant's memory is marvelous. A doctor once lanced the foot of an elephant, thus relieving him of great pain. Sixteen years passed and the man and the beast did not meet again. One day the elephant was parading in a certain city, when he stopped all of a sudden and going up to the sidewalk put out his trunk to salute the surgeon who had lanced his foot sixteen years before.

In Siam he is used in the lumber-yards and is a great lumber-piler.

The elephant has always furnished much sport for the princes in India, where he is used to hunt tigers. The men ride on the great beast's back and shoot the tiger from this vantage-ground.

A domesticated elephant is also often used in capturing wild elephants.

But all these stirring pictures of the elephant in tiger hunts, taking part in elephant-drives, and piling lumber are scenes of the Orient and far removed from our United States. Here we know the elephant as a show animal and the pride of the circus. True, he can when occasion requires put on a harness and draw a circus-wagon out of the mud when six horses have failed to start it, but he is usually seen marching along in the parade with stately tread, or quietly eating hay in the animal tent. If he is very clever, he will come into the circus ring and do tricks that are fairly marvelous. But in these he does not use as much reason as we often think. They are more the result of months of patient training on the part of the trainer and a fine memory on the part of the pachyderm.

So I think it is as the circus favorite that we shall still have to know the elephant, the great feature in the parade, and the giant of all the circus wonders.

In this book, however, the author will take the reader to the jungle and the plain where the elephant lives and where he is captured, and show how he is brought from the wild, and tamed and taught tricks, until he becomes the very central figure in the American Circus.

Baby Elephant

Baby Elephant was born under a broad spreading blackwood-tree at the edge of the great jungle in the Malay Peninsula. So, you see, he was an Asiatic elephant.

Baby Elephant's mother had chosen his birthplace with great care and judgment. The wild mothers are always wise concerning their young. It was shady and cool under the blackwood-tree, and there was plenty of underbrush to shield them from curious eyes, not that they needed greatly to be shielded, for the scent of the elephant is enough to strike terror to the heart of almost any of the jungle-dwellers, but it was well to be on the safe side. At the time Baby Elephant was born, his mother was fifty years old, but, as you have already learned, this is not an extreme age for elephants.

Baby Elephant's life for the first few weeks was very simple. The great herd to which he belonged and of which his mother was leader, slept in the daytime and fed by night. So when the tropical sun beat down over the plains with scorching heat, the elephants would go into the cool deep jungle and lie down in the shade to sleep; but when the sun had disappeared and the mellow moonlight flooded the plains, they came forth to graze. Baby Elephant's mother usually left him in the jungle, hidden away in some secure spot when she went forth to feed. Baby Elephant's own meals were very easily obtained. He simply took his fill of elephant-milk at his mother's udders, just behind her forelegs, whenever he was hungry. While taking his meal, he had to curl his trunk up along his mother's side to keep it out of the way.

Baby Elephant himself was a perfectly formed elephant, even at birth. Just like his mother and the rest of the herd, only very small, for while he weighed only two hundred pounds his mother weighed over five tons.

Baby Elephant was a very playful, inquisitive jungle baby and his inquisitiveness often got him into trouble. When he was about a month old he attempted to chew his mother's ear one day when she was lying down, and when she poked him away with her trunk he did not take the hint but went back to this new game again and again. Finally his mother tired of the sport and gave him such a push with her trunk that he went sprawling.

About the only times Baby Elephant left the jungle during the first weeks of his life were when he went to the water-hole to drink. At first he did not seem to know how to drink, but he watched his mother put her trunk in the water and fill it and then squirt the water into her mouth, and so Baby Elephant soon learned the trick. The mother elephant would also squirt the water over her body, giving herself a fine shower-bath. She treated Baby Elephant in the same way, much to his disgust at first, but he soon learned to like the shower-bath.

Among the worst things that Baby Elephant had to endure during his first summer were the swarms of ffies and mosquitoes. He did not much mind them on his skin, but they stung his eyes and nearly made him blind. Each day when he went to the water-hole his mother used to plunge his head under the water. At first he did not understand what she was doing it for and was much grieved at being so treated, but he finally saw that it was to wash the flies and mosquitoes away from his eyes and to cleanse them.

Like all wilderness babies, Baby Elephant was taught strict obedience. This applied especially to his staying just where his mother had secreted him when she went to feed in the night. Usually he was very good in this particular. She could come back after many long hours and find him just where she had left him. But one night he transgressed his mother's command and came to grief.

He had usually slept while his mother was away but this night he was not sleepy and felt very curious and mischievous. There were many strange sounds in the jungle about him and he wondered what they meant. At first he tried to sleep, but sleep would not come to him, so finally he got up and began wandering around. Every few minutes he would return to the spot where his mother had left him, for he knew it was not right to leave it. But gradually he grew bolder and went farther into the jungle. Finally he went so far that he became lost, and then he wandered around and around trying to find his way back. Once he encountered a wild boar which rushed past him in the underbrush. At last, when it was beginning to grow light in the east and he had become very lonely and fearful, he encountered a strange figure in the jungle path ahead of him. It was that of a long, live cat with phosphorus eyes and gleaming teeth and lashing tail. While Baby Elephant still stood staring at her. Spotted Leopard leapt full upon his back and sank her sharp claws into his side. Baby Elephant gave one painful, frightened squeak, which was as near as he could come to trumpeting, and bolted through the underbrush, being barely able to run under the weight of the leopard, which was itself not full-grown, or it never would have molested a young elephant.

As good luck would have it. Baby Elephant's mother had been trailing him for an hour just previous to this catastrophe, and in answer to his agonized trumpet came crashing through the underbrush. The leopard saw her before Baby Elephant did, and made its escape, while the young elephant ran trembling to his mother. For several days after that mishap he fairly hugged his mother's side, and he never again wandered away from the hiding-place.

One other mishap he had during that first summer, but this was not very serious. His mother had been feeding near the water-hole and supposed that Baby Elephant was tagging after her, but instead he was exploring the water-hole. He waded around and around in several new places where his mother had never taken him, and finally became mired and caught in a sort of quicksand. Struggle as he would, he could not get out, so he lifted up his trunk and trumpeted pitifully. His mountainous mother, whose maternal love seemed just as tender notwithstanding her great bulk, came running to his assistance. She waded in and wrapping her trunk about him pulled him from the quicksand and brought him back to safety.

During the latter part of the summer when Baby Elephant's first set of teeth were forming, he learned to nibble at the tender shoots on sugar-cane and bamboo tops and also at the plantain. Bamboo, sugar-cane, plantain, and certain tree-roots form most of the diet of the full-grown elephant, and in time they became that of Baby Elephant.

The young elephant early learned that his trunk was the most valuable member that he had. The end of the trunk is so fashioned that an elephant can reach down with the upper side and up with the lower side and use it as a hand. But the elephant is very careful of his trunk and when fighting holds it straight up. Most of his fighting he does with his tusks. Baby Elephant was the cause of a striking example of what a male elephant can do with his tusks when opportunity offers. Baby Elephant's mother and his sire were one day making their way through the jungle when they came upon a mighty Bengal tiger. The tiger had just killed a deer and was eating it directly in the pathway of the elephants. As the big bull elephant that was leading the little band approached, the tiger bared its fangs and snarled and refused to give way to the lord of the jungle. This so infuriated the elephant that he charged, head down, and caught the tiger fairly on his tusks. With a mighty upward movement of his head, he sent the tiger thirty feet into the tree-tops, and when this tiger came down, the fight had all gone out of him, and he slunk away in great haste.

Thus it was, sleeping in the jungle by day, and staying in hiding at night while the adult elephants fed on the plains, that Baby Elephant spent his first summer. But as the weeks passed and he grew larger and was weaned, he finally went with the herd when they fed at night, and this made him feel that he was really one of them. He had never quite outgrown his curiosity or his playfulness, however, for he was still a baby elephant.

The Jungle Folk

The jungle folk were a strange and varied company, ranging all the way from the black langur, the small monkey that swung, chattered, scolded, and swore in the tree-tops, to the great Bengal tiger that skulked in the underbrush and sought his meat wherever he could find it. The black langur was a noisy mischievous fellow, and his cry of "Wah! wah! wah!" followed by a "Hoo-oo, hoo-oo, hoo-oo!" was always ringing through the jungle. He tormented the birds and even followed after the great tiger, hooting and swearing at him from the tree-tops whenever he appeared in the jungle. But as all the jungle folk hated the tiger, no one cared. There are three sorts of tiger, all belonging to the same species, the game-killer, the cattle-killer, and the man-eater. The tiger most often seen in Baby Elephant's jungle was an enormous man-eater.

Baby Elephant, in time, learned to know all the jungle folk, some of whom he liked and some he hated, but he was curious about them all. His inquisitive trunk went poking about in many strange places and often got its owner into sad adventures. But, as Baby Elephant's hide was very thick, he could not be badly bitten, and as his bones were well covered with flesh, they did not break easily, and so he survived all his adventures. Besides, the fact that he was an elephant was in itself partial protection for him.

You have already heard of Baby Elephant's sorry adventure when he ran away from the spot where his mother had hidden him and was clawed by a young leopard. From that hour Baby Elephant hated all leopards, both spotted and black.

The leopard is a sleek and beautiful member of the cat family, about two-thirds the size of the American mountain lion. He is a great hunter, and is fond of lying upon an overhanging limb and falling like a thunderbolt upon his prey when it passes beneath. Woe to the black buck that comes within striking distance of this dread hunter!

Baby Elephant and his mother witnessed a thrilling battle one morning when Baby Elephant was about three months old. They had just come back from the plains where they had been feeding the night before and were lying in a dense portion of the jungle, sleeping with the rest of the herd, when they were aroused by a mighty commotion from Black Langur and his noisy company. Birds were also joining in the general alarm, so Baby Elephant's mother arose silently and stole away noiselessly through the jungle to see what it was all about. She did not intend that Baby Elephant should follow her, but he did. Presently they came to an open spot in the jungle which was quite free from trees, and there in the centre of this amphitheatre a terrible battle was going on. Baby Elephant's mother thrust her head out through the overhanging branches so she could see it and Baby Elephant himself watched from between her forelegs. The trees surrounding the battle-ground were fairly alive with monkeys, screaming and shouting and seemingly urging on the combatants.

Right in the middle of the amphitheatre Spotted Leopard and Baba-rusa, the wild boar, were engaged in deadly battle. This wild pig was quite different from the domestic pig. He was taller, rangier, and without any superfluous fat. His tusks were more fully developed, and his movements were like lightning. Altogether he is a desperate fighter and a match for any tiger. Spotted Leopard and Wild Boar were facing each other, sparring for position. The big cat would suddenly spring and seek to rake the boar across the face with deadly claws, but instead would meet Wild Boar's broad shoulder and perhaps get a rip in her side from his sharp tusks. Again and again the infuriated cat sprang but did little damage. Around and around Wild Boar she circled, trying to get behind him and jump upon his back, but he always faced her with his gleaming tusks. Faster and more furious the battle raged, while the monkeys screamed with delight. Twice the great cat got in a raking blow in Baba-rusa's face, but he slashed her in return each time. Finally the leopard became furious and sprang full upon Wild Boar's head. There was a wild squeal from the pig, and a yell of pain from the great cat, as the two combatants rolled upon the ground. Finally, with great agility, Wild Boar sprang to his feet and ripped the still prostrate leopard half the length of her belly. She struggled feebly for a few moments and then stretched out dead, while the badly lacerated boar limped away into the deep jungle, grunting with satisfaction.

Orang-outang, the monkey, whose name signifies "wild man" in the Malay lan- guage, also frequented Baby Elephant's jungle, although he is a native of Borneo, but he usually kept well to the swampy part down by the great river, for he lived in the water spruces which stood knee deep in the river. When Mrs. Wild Man was about to give birth to the young, the Orang-outangs built themselves a platform high up in the tree-tops. This was made by putting boughs across convenient crotches in the tree, and then covering the platform with fine twigs, making a comfortable nest. Here, the little Orang-outangs were born. Mr. Wild Man was a dangerous fellow. He had a broad back and chest like a prize-fighter; his arms, when spread out, measured ten feet, six inches, from finger-tip to finger-tip. They were so long that his hands hung down well below his knees. His legs were short and thick; his head was rather small, but his jaws were heavy and armed with very strong canine teeth. He was covered with coarse reddish-brown hair. The orang-outang is so strong that he can bend the ordinary inch iron bars in a wild-animal cage like jackstraws. Baby Elephant saw the Orang-outangs frequently when he and his mother came down to the great river to drink.

There were other creatures that came occasionally to Baby Elephant's jungle, but they were more often seen upon the great plains. These creatures always walked upon their hind legs, and some of them even carried the dreadful thunder-stick which could speak to the jungle people in such a terrible voice that they would lie down at its command and die. Most of these Malays were armed with spears and bows, which were not so deadly as the thunder-stick. But occasionally a sahib or white man came among them and he always carried a thunder-stick. Even the natives were very cunning in setting traps for the jungle folk, but it was not until Sahib Anderson from the United States came with fifty natives to Baby Elephant's jungle to capture wild animals for the dealers at Singapore that the real troubles for the jungle folk began.

When Sahib Anderson and his fifty jungle-beaters finally descended upon the jungle where the elephant herd usually spent the day resting and sleeping, great consternation reigned among the jungle folk.

Baby Elephant's mother, the leader of the herd and always on the watch, was the first to discover their coming. She arose and stood listening for several minutes. Baby Elephant himself followed her example. He usually did most of the things he saw his mother do. He did not detect the faint, far-away sounds, but the old elephant did. Her command to the herd for a silent and noiseless retreat was not given by any audible sound.

Probably the command was communicated from elephant to elephant by signs, or perhaps it was telepathic, but I think the former was the case. But certain it was that the great herd of perhaps sixty head began moving silently through the thick jungle, all going in the same direction, although they could not see each other. The silence with which this movement can be executed is astonishing to even a hunter who is versed in the ways of the wild. The adult elephants were ten feet in height and weighed around five tons each, yet they went almost without the breaking of a twig. This was partly due to the fact that their large feet are well cushioned, and all sounds smothered under them.

Mr. William T. Hornaday tells of coming upon a large herd in India. He was within fifty yards of the herd before he was discovered by a female elephant, one of the outposts. This elephant stood perfectly still watching the hunter for several minutes, while he in turn watched her. Finally she turned and slowly walked away into the jungle. The hunter found to his great astonishment that while she had been watching him she had probably given the command to the herd to retreat, and all had disappeared without making an audible sound.

With the coming of Sahib Anderson, the elephant herd moved five miles down the bank of the great river to a still more dense portion of the jungle.

Baba-rusa, the wild boar, next discovered the coming of the jungle hunters, and led his herd of twenty-five members five miles up the river.

The leopards, both the spotted and the black, skulked away and hid in the deepest portions of the jungle where they were comparatively safe. The black bear also fled, but Black Langur held his ground, although he kept at a safe distance in the tree-tops. Yet he did not disguise his presence, but set up a great din from time to time, so that the forest fairly rang with his "Wah! wah! wah! Hoo-oo, hoo-oo!"