V27402 Elephants Piling Teak Logs in great Riverside Lumber Yard, Rangoon, Burma

V27402 Elephants Piling Teak Logs in Great Riverside Lumber Yard, Rangoon, Burma

We see here at work, piling teak logs, four of a herd of elephants on the payroll of a Burma lumber company. The beasts seem almost human in their action. They work quietly, silently and deftly, sorting and piling the great logs. The rider, perched aloft on a seat like a sawbuck, seems almost superfluous. The foremost elephant was captured full-grown in the forests and trained to his task in a year’s time. The pair at the farther end of the yard work together. One inserts his tusks beneath the log, wraps his trunk about it and lifts it high enough for the other to slip his tusks beneath one end. Then together they lift the log and walk softly to the pile with it. And no man could arrange a neater, more symmetrical pile. Do you wonder that a healthy elephant is worth 4,500 rupes, more than $1400 in our money?

In Burma, the elephant takes the place that the horse has in the United States and Europe; that the reindeer has in the Arctic; that the camel has on the desert; and that the ox has in central Asia. He can draw more than any other land animal, and he can also be used as a lifting machine when the load is dragged to the end of its journey. He is a patient beast, good natured, and very intelligent.

There are two kinds of elephants. One is called the Indian and the other the African elephant. The Indian elephant is found in the woods of Ceylon, Southern India, the Himalaya Mountains, Burma, Siam, and the East Indies. The African elephant is not used for working, but the Indian elephant has long been used for that purpose, especially in Burma and Siam. The Indian elephant is now closely protected in order that there may always be a supply of these staunch beasts of burden.