By EDISON MARSHALL
From Everybody's Magazine
An elephant is old on the day he is born, say the natives of Burma, and no white man is
ever quite sure just what they mean. Perhaps they refer to his pink, old-gentleman's skin
and his droll, fumbling, old-man ways and his squeaking treble voice. And maybe they
mean he is born with a wisdom such as usually belongs only to age. And it is true that if
any animal in the world has had a chance to acquire knowledge it is the elephant, for his
breed are the oldest residents of this old world.
They are so old that they don't seem to belong to the twentieth century at all. Their long
trunks, their huge shapes, all seem part of the remote past. They are just the remnants of a
breed that once was great.
Long and long ago, when the world was very young indeed, when the mountains were
new, and before the descent of the great glaciers taught the meaning of cold, they were
the rulers of the earth, but they have been conquered in the struggle for existence. Their
great cousins, the mastodon and the mammoth, are completely gone, and their own tribe
can now be numbered by thousands.
But because they have been so long upon the earth, because they have wealth of
experience beyond all other creatures, they seem like venerable sages in a world of
children. They are like the last veterans of an old war, who can remember scenes and
faces that all others have forgotten.
Far in a remote section of British India, in a strange, wild province called Burma,
Muztagh was born. And although he was born in captivity, the property of a mahout, in
his first hour he heard the far-off call of the wild elephants in the jungle.
The Burmans, just like the other people of India, always watch the first hour of a baby's
life very closely. They know that always some incident will occur that will point, as a
weather-vane points in the wind, to the baby's future. Often they have to call a man
versed in magic to interpret, but sometimes the prophecy is quite self-evident. No one
knows whether or not it works the same with baby elephants, but certainly this wild, far-
carrying call, not to be imitated by any living voice, did seem a token and an omen in the
life of Muztagh. And it is a curious fact that the little baby lifted his ears at the sound and
rocked back and forth on his pillar legs.
Of all the places in the great world, only a few remain wherein a captive elephant hears
the call of his wild brethren at birth. Muztagh's birthplace lies around the corner of the
Bay of Bengal, not far from the watershed of the Irawadi, almost north of Java. It is
strange and wild and dark beyond the power of words to tell. There are great dark forests,
unknown, slow-moving rivers, and jungles silent and dark and impenetrable.
