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.

Little Muztagh weighed a flat two hundred pounds at birth.  But this was not the queerest thing about him.  Elephant babies, although usually weighing not more than one hundred and eighty, often touch two hundred.  The queerest thing was a peculiarity that probably was completely overlooked by his mother.  If she saw it out of her dull eyes, she took no notice of it.  It was not definitely discovered until the mahout came out of his hut with a lighted fagot for a first inspection.

He had been wakened by the sound of the mother’s pain. “Hai!” he had exclaimed to his wife.  “Who has ever heard a cow bawl so loud in labour?  The little one that to-morrow you will see beneath her belly must weigh more than you!”