They have many elephants, the Great Mogul having not fewer than 1400 for his own use, and all the nobles of the country have more or less, some having to the number of an hundred.  Though the largest of all terrestrial animals, the elephants are wonderfully tractable, except that they are mad at times; but at all other times, a little boy is able to rule the largest of them.  I have seen some thirteen feet high; but I have been often told that some are fifteen feet in height at the least.  Their colour is universally black, their skins very thick and smooth, and without hair.  They take much delight to bathe themselves in water, and they swim better than any beast I know.  They lie down and rise again at pleasure, as other beasts do.  Their pace is not swift, being only about three miles an hour; but they are the surest footed beasts in the world, as they never endanger their riders by stumbling.  They are the most docile of all creatures, and of those we account merely possessed of instinct, they come nearest to reason.  Lipsius, Cent. 1, Epist. 50, in his observations, taken from others, writes more concerning them than I can confirm, or than any can credit, as I conceive; yet I can vouch for many things which seem to be acts of reason rather than of mere brute sense, which we call instinct.  For instance, an elephant will do almost any thing which his keeper commands.  If he would have him terrify a man, he will make towards him as if he meant to tread him in pieces, yet does him no hurt.  If he would have him to abuse a man, he will take up dirt, or kennel water, in his trunk, and dash it in his face.  Their trunks are long grisly snouts, hanging down betwixt their tusks, by some called their hand, which they use very dexterously on all occasions.

An English merchant, of good credit, told me the following story of an elephant, as having happened to his own knowledge at Ajimeer, the place where the Mogul then resided:—­This elephant used often to pass through the bazar, or market-place, where a woman who there sold herbs used to give him a handful as he passed her stall.  This elephant afterwards went mad,[234] and, having broken his fetters, took his way furiously through the market-place, whence all the people fled as quickly as possible to get out of his way.  Among these was his old friend the herb-woman, who, in her haste and terror, forgot to take away her little child.  On coming to the place where this woman was in use to sit, the elephant stopped, and seeing the child among the herbs, he took it up gently in his trunk, and laid it carefully on a stall under the projecting roof of a house hard by, without doing it the smallest injury, and then continued his furious course.  A travelling Jesuit, named Acosta, relates a similar story of an elephant at Goa, as from his own experience.—­The king keeps certain elephants for the execution of malefactors.  When one of these is brought forth to dispatch a criminal, if his keeper desires that the offender be destroyed speedily, this vast creature will instantly crush him to atoms under his foot; but if desired to torture him, will break his limbs successively, as men are broken on the wheel.