[144] JORDANUS DE SEVERAC, in his _Mirabilia Descripta_, written about the year 1330, thus describes the mode then in use for taming captured elephants in Cambodia:—“And so the wild elephant remaineth caught between the two gates. Then cometh a man _clothed in black or red, with his face covered_, who cruelly thrashes him from above, and crieth out cruelly against him as against a ‘thief!’ and this goeth on for five or six days; without his getting anything to eat or drink. Then cometh another man with _his face bare and clad in another colour_, who feigneth to smite the first man, and to drive and thrust him away. Then he cometh to the elephant and talketh to him, and with a long spear he scratcheth him, and he kisses him and gives him food. And this goes on for ten or fifteen days, and so by degrees he ventureth down beside him and bindeth him to another elephant. And then after about twenty days he may be taken out to be taught and broken in.” (Chap. v.) [145] This was the largest elephant that had been tamed in Ceylon; he measured upwards of nine feet at the shoulders, and belonged to the caste so highly prized for the temples. He was gentle after his first capture, but his removal from the corral to the stables, though only a distance of six miles, was a matter of the extremest difficulty: his extraordinary strength rendering him more than a match for the attendant decoys. He on one occasion escaped, but was recaptured in the forest; and he afterwards became so docile as to perform a variety of tricks. He was at length ordered to be removed to Colombo; but such was his terror on approaching the fort, that on coaxing him to enter the gate, he became paralysed in the extraordinary way elsewhere alluded to, and died on the spot.