A WHITE ELEPHANT

Siam is in joy, Siam is in jubilation! Peace, happiness, prosperity are assured to the whole country: a white elephant has just been discovered.
During recent great elephant hunts, the natives had the happy surprise of finding in a keddah, one of those keddahs well known to readers of Rudyard Kipling, the prepared enclosure where after several days of pursuit all the big pachyderms are driven back to find, therefore, a young elephant who, in the middle of the gray masses of his brothers, appeared white as a pearl of the Bay of Bengal.

Caught in the wooded mountains of Poung-Loung, not far from Tongou, the marvel, with extreme care, was brought to Bangkok, The king, followed by the entire delirious population, went to meet him. The albino with pink eyes, who still measures barely 1 m. 70 in height, it is in short a baby elephant, already seems conscious of its dignity. When to enter the city, in the sacred boat that a sumptuous canopy transforms into a temple, the holy animal crossed the. Menam, an entire people acclaimed its motionless dignity. When it disembarked, the high priests offered it water. Then, covered with a silver veil embroidered with precious stones, escorted by horsemen and dancers dressed in red, the white elephant climbed the avenue that leads to the palace. For three days Bangkok was in celebration. And in the evening, before the king and the assembled notables, the priests addressed their sung invocations to the elephant.