In March of every year a large number of wild elephants are captured at the city of Ayuthia, and from them His Majesty makes selections for his royal stables in Bangkok. For eight or ten weeks hundreds of men are employed to drive them from the forests where they roam, that they may be nearer the city. On the day appointed for their capture a number of tame ones are used to entice them into the enclosure prepared for them, and they seem to take great pleasure and show wonderful sagacity in helping to capture their kindred. They will hem in some two hundred wild ones, and with the help of their drivers and attendants compel them to enter through the gate into the enclosure. Some go in quietly, and others make great resistance. Such as His Majesty fancies are then secured by strong noosed ropes cautiously slipped over their feet and fastened to trees or posts. When thoroughly subdued by hunger or hard blows they are brought down to Bangkok. After a time they become quite reconciled to their new surroundings, and show no disposition to return to their forest home. Nothing can equal the veneration of the Siamese for the so-called white elephant, though the only really _white_ elephant is upon their national flag. Sometimes one is found something the color of a Bath brick (used for cleaning knives) or a little darker, and is so much lighter-colored than usual that it is spoken of as _white_; but most of these are only lighter in patches on shoulders, neck, head and inside of the ears. All over the kingdom, when such an albino is found, there is great rejoicing, and the finder is very handsomely rewarded. They come, as a rule, from the Laos territory to the north.