As soon as it is known that a troop or _horde_ of elephants has assembled in a forest, the natives set to work, and with trunks of trees fixed in the ground and supported by transversal bars and buttresses, construct a vast palisaded enclosure, or _corral_, whose entrance forms a kind of gullet so narrow that the animals can only enter one by one, and once drawn into it are unable to return. This being accomplished, a thousand men, Europeans or Cingalese, surround the forest; they enclose the herd in a circle which incessantly contracts, and drive them before them by waving their torches, and keeping up a grand _tintamarre_ of tamtams, trumpets, and musket-shots. The frightened animals can find no other avenue of escape than the entrance to the corral, where are placed, moreover, as an attraction, some females trained to act as decoys. When all, or nearly all the herd, has been driven into the enclosure, the entrance is strongly and firmly closed with ropes and beams. The elephants, perceiving themselves caught in a trap, naturally endeavour to effect their escape by the way they entered. A sufficient number of hunters then place themselves along each side of the avenue, and a few, mounted on the decoys, are stationed at its extremity. The moment that one of the captives has got entangled in it, his retreat is cut off by means of thick planks piled across the palisade, and he is allowed to make his way towards the entrance, which is also blocked up. There he encounters the decoys, which force him, by striking him with their trunks, to fall back against a neighbouring tree, to which he is speedily bound with ropes. This first operation accomplished, the females are led back to the corral, and the game is renewed, until all the animals have undergone the same fate, and each of them is thralled to a tree in the forest. Nothing now remains but to accustom them to a life of servitude; and this is done by depriving them of food for a short time, then administering it in small quantities, and proceeding from the articles they like the least to those they prize the most. The privation at first enfeebles them, and consequently calms their irritation, while they feel the greater gratitude afterwards for the alleviation which is so readily afforded them. This gratitude, and, still more, the dependance in which they find themselves upon man, who at his supreme pleasure grants or refuses their food, renders them in a few days docile and tractable. Thus their docility, and the important services which they render, mainly arise in the overmastering fear which man inspires in them.