Travels in India (Tavernier) 39.3.6

39.3.6

from the island of Sumatra, the Kingdom of Cochin, the Kingdom of Siam, and the frontiers of the Kingdom of Bhutan towards Great Tartary. They come also from the coast of Melinda, on the East coast of Africa, where they must be very abundant, according to a report which was made to me at Goa by a Portuguese captain who came from that region to make some complaint against the Governor of Mozambique. He told me that throughout that coast there are many enclosures fenced with elephants’ tusks only, and that some of them are more than a league in circuit. He added that the blacks of the country hunt the elephants, and that they eat the flesh, but for each elephant which they slay they have to give one of the tusks to their Chief. I have described how elephants are captured in the territory of the King of Golconda ; the following is the method employed in the island of Ceylon in the capture of these animals. A long passage, enclosed on both sides, is prepared, so that when an elephant has entered he cannot turn either to the right or to the left. This passage is wide to begin with, but narrows gradually to the end, where there is only room for a female elephant, which is in season, to lie down.