According to the belief of one mediæval writer, at least, the capture of the elephant is not a matter of much difficulty, though, having caught him, he seems to find no better use for him than to kill him as so much raw material for the dyer’s vat, instead of utilizing his gigantic strength and magnificent willingness for work[46] in the service of man. Nowadays, the men do most of the elephant-catching, but “among the Ethiopians,” says one ancient authority on the subject, Bartholomew Anglicus, “in some countries elephants be hunted in this wise. There go in the desert two maidens, and one of them beareth a vessel and the other a sword. And these maidens begin to sing alone; and the beast hath liking when he heareth their song, and cometh to them, and falleth asleep anon for liking of the song,” an explanation of the drowsiness that would scarcely nowaday be held satisfactory at any concert or social function of the kind; “then the one maid sticketh him in the throat or in the side with a sword, and the other taketh his blood in a vessel. And with that blood the people of the country dye cloth, and done colour it therewith.” The writer prefaces his story by the assertion that it is “full wonderful;” and so it is, when regarded from our modern standpoint, but to anyone who could believe that unicorns could be captured in a very similar way, we should have thought that the narrative would have seemed most matter-of-fact and prosaic. The ladies of Ethiopia must have been of considerably stouter heart than some fair maidens of the present day, who dare not enter where the presence of mouse or cockroach is suspected. Great good-natured beast as the elephant is, he has more than one most merciless and vindictive foe. “There ben Bestes,” or Maundevile is in error, “men clepen hem Loerancz, and thei han a blak Hed and thre longe Hornes trenchant in the Front, scharpe as a Sword, and the body is sclender. And he is a fulle felonous Best, and he chacethe and sleethe the Olifaunt.” What can have ever prompted and suggested the idea of such a very unpleasant tricorn it is impossible to say. In real life the elephant and the rhinoceros are sometimes at feud, but clearly the massive rhinoceros cannot be this very slender and objectionable three-horned beast. We have seen, too, that the dragon cannot let the elephant alone; he is to the full as “felonous” as the Loerancz. Pliny held that this constant unpleasantness on the part of the reptile was a “sport of nature.” In other words, that Nature,—personified, as the Romans personified the winds, the mountain streams, and so forth,—felt a real delight in seeing a downright fight between two such doughty antagonists. As the dragon was always the aggressor, while the elephant only wished to be let alone, and merely used his strength in self-defence when so wantonly attacked, one’s sympathies must necessarily be with the latter. [Illustration: FIG. 14.]