DEATH OF A GENTLE GIANT

A gleaning from "Fifty years in Ceylon" by  Major Thomas Skinner:

Elephants are strange animals. I have seen many little traits of which I have never read any account in the books of natural history. One thing I noticed, that the larger and more powerful they are when fist captured and brought to the stables, the quieter and more docile they appear. The largest captured elephant I have ever seen was one of in the possession of Mr. Cripps, the Government Agent of the Seven Korales [1]; he was a full-sized animal, and yet he fed from our hands the evening he was brought in. He was very docile in his training until the day he was first put in harness, when he could not stand the indignity of being expected to draw a wagon. He dropped the shafts and died-the natives [2] declared of a broken heart. This was by no means a solitary instance of casualties from a like cause. I have had several animals in my own department [3] who have died when first put into harness, and who, apparently, had nothing the matter with them before.

Images: Ceylon Elephants transporting a boiler to a Ceylon Tea factory in the Central Highlands

Kandy to Colombo by a cart drawn by an elephant

Above images are by kind courtesy of  Lankapura 

http://lankapura.com/2008/06/elephant-transporting-boiler-tea/

Footnotes by bunpeiris
[1] One of the 21 divisions of the province of Kandy
[2] Sinhalese
[3] Public Works Department of British Ceylon
Major Thomas Skinner, CMB (1804 – 1877), upon his arrival at Trincomalee  by the  H. M. S. Liverpool in 1818, at the age of 14, was commissioned a second lieutenant in Ceylon Rifle Regiment and was ordered to take command of of detachment of the 73rd, 83rd and Ceylon Rifles to march from Tricomalee across the island, through Kandy To Colombo. There weren't roads in the sense as we call today; there were foot paths in the forests and wooded hills. Skinner, the British Child Soldier was destined to build roads in Ceylon.
Following the completion of Colombo –Kandy Road in the year 1832, Thomas Skinner had his name immortalized in the colonial history of Ceylon. In 1825 Major Thomas Skinner was appointed as head of the Colombo defense guard, in 1833 Lieutenant Quartermaster General and Surveyor General. In 1841, Skinner was promoted to Commissioner of Highways. “Fifty year in Ceylon” is Thomas Skinner’s autobiography published in the year 1891 by W. H. Allen & Co., London, U.K.