Page:Siam (IA siampeepsatmany00youn).pdf/102

 up goes the man on to his back. The driver sits astride on the neck, for the elephant carries his head so steadily that there is less motion there than in any other part of the body. The driver is armed with a stick, at the end of which is a sharp-pointed iron hook. When the elephant misbehaves himself he gets many a cruel blow with the vicious weapon.

The elephants are mostly used for work in the teak-forests. The males, or tuskers, when well trained, are worth from £100 to £200 each. The females are not usually employed in this work, and no elephants at all are worked in hot weather between ten in the morning and three in the afternoon. An elephant begins to work when it is about twenty-five years of age, and is at its best at about seventy. At that age it can lift with its tusks a log of wood weighing half a ton, and drag along the ground a log weighing as much as three tons. Elephants are very long-lived, sometimes living 150 years or more.

In the forest the trees are felled by men who use heavy, long-handled axes. This work is done in the wet season, so that the trees fall in soft ground and do not get seriously damaged. The logs are arranged in parallel rows by the elephants, and then each elephant is harnessed to a log, which he proceeds to drag towards the stream. Young stems are placed under the big logs to serve as rollers. The distance from the forest to the river is often as much as ten miles, and is rarely less than five miles. The elephants move very slowly—at a pace averaging less than three miles an hour—and the process of taking the logs to the river is therefore slow and