Beginners usually do not like the sensation of elephant riding.  Young girls giggle, mature ladies squeal, middle-aged men grab hold of something firm and say nothing, while impenitent sinners often express themselves in terms that cannot properly be published.  The acute trouble takes place just after mounting the beast and just before leaving the lofty perch occupied by passengers on his back.  A saddle is placed upon his upper deck, a sort of saw-horse, and the lower legs stretch at an angle sufficiently obtuse to encompass his breadth of beam.  This saw-horse is lashed to the hull with numerous straps and ropes and on top of it are placed rugs and cushions.  Each saddle is built for four passengers, sitting dos-a-dos, back to back, two on a side, and a little shelf hangs down to support their feet.  In order to diminish the climb the elephant kneels down in the road.  A naked heathen brings a ladder, rests it against the side of the beast and the passengers climb up and take their seats in the saddle.  Another naked heathen, who sits straddle the animal’s neck, looks around at the load, inquires if everybody is ready, jabs the elephant under the ear with a sharpened iron prong and then the trouble begins.  It is a good deal like an earthquake.

An elephant gets up one leg at a time, and during the process the passengers on the upper deck are describing parabolas, isosceles triangles and parallelepipedons in the circumambient atmosphere.  There isn’t much to hold on to and that makes it the more exciting.  Then, when the animal finally gets under way, its movements are similar to those of an earthquake or a vessel without ballast in a first-class Hatteras gale.  The irregularity and uncertainty of the motion excites apprehension, and as the minutes pass by you become more and more firmly convinced that something is wrong with the animal or the saddle or the road, and the way the beast wiggles his ears is very alarming.  There is nobody around to answer questions or to issue accident-insurance policies and the naked heathen attendants talk no language that you know.  But after a while you get used to it, your body unconsciously adjusts itself to the changes of position, and on the return trip, you have a pretty good time.  You become so accustomed to the awkward and the irregular movements that you really enjoy the novelty and are perfectly willing to try it again.

But the most wonderful part of all is how the mahout steers the elephant.  It is one of the mysteries that foreigners can never understand.  He carries a goad in each hand—­a rod of iron, about as big as a poker, with an ornamental handle generally embossed with silver or covered with enamel.  One of the points curves around like half a crescent; the other is straight and both are sharpened to a keen point.  When the mahout or driver wants the elephant to do something, he jabs one of the goads into his hide—­sometimes one and sometimes the other, and at different places on the neck, under the ears, and on top of the head, and somehow or another the elephant understands what a jab in a particular place means and obeys cheerfully like the great, good-natured beast that he is.  I have never been able to understand the system.  Elephant driving is an occult science.