Outside should be a strong iron step, to get out and in by easily, and a strong iron ring, through which to pass the rope that binds the howdah to the elephant.

In the day excursions, the elephants are decorated in the most costly manner with rugs and fine stuffs, gold lace, and fringe; the seats called the howdahs are even covered with Cashmere shawls; richly fringed canopies keep off the heat of the sun, or else servants hold enormous umbrellas for this purpose.

I sent off my bed and bedding on Geerdharee Jha's old elephant, a timid, useless brute, fit neither far beating jungle nor for carrying a howdah.

Jack hung the howdah with silken streamers and set a mahout's turban on the head of the man on the seat in front of him, while the glistening semi-oval tops of the limousines floating in the mist of the rising grade from Madison Square to Forty-second Street, swarmed and halted in a kind of blind, cramped pas de quatre from cross street to cross street, amid the breaking surge of pedestrians.

He made such tremendous springs, that I thought every moment he must reach the howdah and select a victim from among us.

The elephant was rushing directly under this tree, and a large branch would have swept howdah and everything it contained clean off the elephant's back, as easily as one would brush off a fly.