The Prince is carried back to his home again, with drums beating, horns blowing, and with the same attendant crowd of soldiers, priests, nobles, and peasants. Once upon a time the people really believed in the ceremony, and what it was supposed to tell them. Even now many thousands of them have great faith in the acts that have been performed; but as education spreads, the belief in these quaint and picturesque ceremonies will die out. It will, however, be long before they are entirely given up, for they provide opportunities for a merry holiday; and if there is one thing a Siamese loves more than another, it is a day of feasting and merriment, a day when work is thought of as something belonging only to the morrow. CHAPTER XVI ELEPHANTS The chief animal of Siam is the elephant. Elephants are found in great numbers in the north, and also in the wide plains of the south, where these plains are not cultivated, but are covered with jungle-grass, brushwood, and bamboo. The Siamese elephant sometimes attains a height of ten or eleven feet. Frequent measurements have proved the curious fact that the height of an elephant is usually about twice the circumference of its biggest foot. The driver of the elephant is called a _mahout_. When the _mahout_ wishes to mount the beast, the elephant bends his right fore-leg to form a step. As soon as the _mahout_ puts his foot on the step, the elephant gives a jerk, and 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.