WILD BEASTS IN POLAND.

The king of Persia sent the Czar an elephant, but it died, on its way to Moscow, at Zaritza.-Le Bruyn, Vol. I. p. 95.

289

CHAP.

VIII.

The ambassadors and some of their friends took a walk, about a league from Astracan, to see the habitations of the Tartars. Every hut had its hawk or falcon. We met one of their princes returning from his sport with his hawk on his fist.-Olearius, p. 132.

GRAND SEIGNIOR.

ONCE every year the Grand Seignior recreates himself with hawking, and also appoints a general hunting match. A space of ground is enclosed, of five or six days' riding. All the neighbouring inhabitants are ordered to appear. When the game is driven into a narrow compass, the sultan, from an eminence, has the pleasure of seeing the wild boars, wolves, foxes, and hares, killed with clubs; and the pheasants and partridges by his falcons*.

POLAND.

THE Woods in Poland are well stored with deer, bears, wolves, boars, &c. The Masovian forests have plenty of eiks as large as horses, with bodies like the stag; wild asses; buffaloes; bisonets, in shape and horns like an ox, with manes like horses', beards on their lower jaws,

* Cornelius Le Bruyn, 105.

PP

290

VIII.

THE URUS.-WILD HORSES.

CHAP. hard rough tongues, a bunch on their backs, and a smell of musk: they are incredibly strong. The Polish nobility hunt them, and esteem their flesh, when powdered, a great dainty. The urus, called by the Polanders Thur, is a kind of wild ox, bigger, stronger, and swifter than the tame: he has a short black beard, a bush of hair upon his forehead, and horns very wide and large: Pliny says the Romans made lanterns of them. In the deserts near the Dnieper, they have a sheep like a goat, with short legs, and horns straight up. There are wild horses in the Ukraine, excellent as food: and in Lithuania and Muscovy, a beast called Rossomoko, with the body and tail of a wolf, and the face of a cat, which feeds on dead carcasses*.

* Doctor Bernard Conner, Physician to John Sobieski. Harris's Voy. II. 508. As the Mongols were in Poland, that country may have furnished them with some of the animals, of which bones have been found.

CHAPTER IX.

Of Roman and Greek Wars in which Elephants were employed.Marches of Hannibal and Asdrubal over the Alps, with a great number of Elephants.Arduous march of the Consul Marcius, with Elephants, over the Olympic chain of Mountains in Greece. Of Acilius, with Elephants, over mount Corax. Elephants killed, and some captured by Cato, in the defile of Thermopyla.

IX.

ALEXANDER the Great, in the battle with Porus, captured all the CHAP. elephants that were not slain; besides which Bargantes and Omphis presented him with one hundred and twenty.-Q. Curtius. Arrian.

B.C. 321.

The kings, on the opposite shore of the Ganges, were waiting with an immense army, chariots of war, and several thousands of elephants, trained for war. Androcottus, who reigned not long after, made Seleucus a present of five hundred at one time.-Plutarch, "Alexander." All the other kings having united their forces against Antigonus, B.C. 300. Demetrius left Greece in order to join him. Had Antigonus (supposed to be the illegitimate brother of Alexander the Great) restrained his ambition to govern the world, he might have kept the preeminence among the successors of Alexander: but, by his arrogance, he exasperated many young and powerful princes. He met the enemy at Ipsus

292

IX.

ELEPHANTS FIRST USED IN ITALY.

CHAP. in Phrygia. He had seventy thousand foot, ten thousand horse, and seventy-five elephants. The confederate forces were sixty-four thousand foot, ten thousand five hundred cavalry, one hundred and twenty armed chariots, and four hundred elephants. Lysimachus, Seleucus, Ptolemy, Cassander, Antigonus, and Demetrius, were all present. Pyrrhus accompanied Demetrius, and, though but young, bore down all before him. Demetrius, pursuing the enemy imprudently, was intercepted by their numerous elephants. His father, Antigonus, was killed; and Demetrius fled to Ephesus with only five thousand foot, and four thousand horse. The kings dismembered the conquered dominions; and each took a limb.-Plutarch, Dem. and Pyrrhus. B.C. 280. Pyrrhus was the first who brought elephants into Italy. They were a part of those brought by the Greeks from India. He had twenty in the battle of Heraclea, in Lucania: they had towers upon their backs, full of bow-men; and the sight was truly terrifying*. A Roman soldier cut off the trunk of one of the elephants with his sword. Pyrrhus owed the victory to his elephants.-Catrou and Rouillé, Vol. II. p. 444.

B.C. 276.

Curius Dentatus was near Beneventum. Pyrrhus attacked him in the Taurasian fields. On the first onset, a great number of the Epi

* When Fabricius went to Epirus to treat about the ransom and exchange of prisoners, Pyrrhus received him with particular distinction, having been informed that he was highly valued by the Romans for his probity and martial abilities, but that he was extremely poor. Pyrrhus privately offered him gold as a pledge of his friendship, which Fabricius refused. The next day the king, knowing that he had never seen an elephant, ordered the largest he had to be armed and concealed behind a curtain in the room where they were to be in conference. On a sign being given, the curtain was drawn, and the elephant, raising his trunk over the head of Fabricius, made a horrid and terrifying roar. The Roman turned about without being in the least discomposed, and said to Pyrrhus, smiling, "Neither your gold yesterday, nor your beast to-day, has made any impression upon me."— Plutarch, "Pyrrhus."

ELEPHANTS IN GREECE.

rots were killed, and some of their elephants taken. Curius now, with new ardour, drew up in a plain. The king, assisted by his elephants, repulsed the Romans. A corps de reserve now attacked the elephants, with burning torches in one hand, and their swords in the other. The fire, pushed against these huge and furious animals, put them to flight, and created confusion.

293

CHAP.

IX.

A young elephant, which had been wounded in the battle, made a terrible roaring. The mother immediately ran to her young one, which drew after her all the other elephants, and caused such disorder, that the Romans gained a complete victory. The consul, it is said, had but twenty thousand troops in all. Pyrrhus had eighty thousand foot, and six thousand horse; of which thirty-three thousand (some say only twenty thousand) were slain: eight elephants were captured, four died of their wounds, and four were led in triumph at Rome.Catrou, II. 483, 486. Orosius, B. IV. Ch. 2. Eutropius, B. 2. Pyrrhus had many elephants at the siege of Argos. The noise made B.C. 272. by the elephants, and the gates not proving sufficiently large to admit them through with the castles upon their backs, disconcerted all his measures, and produced terrible confusion. Pyrrhus was slightly wounded with a javelin through the breast-plate while he was fighting with the soldier; the mother of the latter, from the top of a house, beheld her son thus engaged, and threw a large tile with both hands at Pyrrhus, which struck his head. The king of Macedon fell from his horse senseless. One Zopyrus killed the king; and his head was sent to Antigonus.-Plutarch, "Life of Pyrrhus."

Regulus, in the battle of Adis, not far from Carthage, captured B.C. 255. eighteen elephants.-Catrou, II. 576.

At Panormus (Palermo) the Carthaginian officer, named Asdrubal, B.C. 250. drew up his elephants, one hundred and forty in number, in one line. The Roman archers poured down a shower of darts upon them and