Timour’s elephant team is described by Sir John Mandeville as presenting a remarkable appearance: “A chariot with four wheels, upon which is a fair chamber of sweet-smelling lignum aloes, which is within covered with plates of fine gold, dubbed with precious stones and great pearls, and drawn by four elephants.” Jehanghir rode through the streets of his capital on an elephant, followed by “twenty royal elephants for his own ascending, so rich, that in precious stones and furniture they braved the sun.” The famous tree-mound of Kublai Khan was built by the aid of elephants. “Not far from the palace,” says an old writer, “on the northern side, and about a bow-shot distance from the surrounding wall, is an artificial mound of earth, the height of which is full an hundred paces, and the circuit at the base about a mile. It is clothed with the most beautiful evergreen-trees: for, whenever his majesty receives information of a handsome tree growing in any place, he causes it to be dug up; however large and heavy it may be, he has it transported by elephants to this mount.” When Timour built his great mosque at Samarcand, he employed ninety-five elephants to draw the stones. In the early days of ship-building in India, these huge animals were engaged to haul the vessels from the stocks; and Verthema, who travelled in India in 1503, gives the following example of their power:— “I saw an instance of the extraordinary strength of these animals while at Cananore, where some Mahometans endeavored to draw a ship on the land, stern foremost, upon three rollers; on which occasion three elephants, commodiously applied, drew with great force, and, bending their heads down to the ground, brought the ship on the land.” Another writer states that he saw a tree overthrown by an elephant, which twenty-three men had attempted in vain. In the war of Coromandel, in 1751, the gates of the fort of Ponomaley were attacked by elephants, whose heads had been covered with iron plates for the purpose.