steel railroad iron used as the top bar of his fence. He knows the
mechanism of the latch of the ponderous steel door between his two
box stalls, and nothing but a small pin that only human fingers
can manipulate suffices to thwart his efforts to control the
latch.

Kartoum has gone over every inch of surface of his two apartments,
his doors, gates and fences, to find something that he can break
or damage. The steel linings of his apartment walls, originally
five feet high, we have been compelled to extend upward to a
height of nine feet, to save the brick walls from being battered
and disfigured. He has searched his steel fences throughout, in
order to find their weakest points, and concentrate his attacks
upon them. If the sharp-pointed iron spikes three inches long that
are set all over his doors are perfectly solid, he respects them,
but if one is the least bit loose in its socket, he works at it
until he finally breaks it off.

I invite any Doubting Thomas who thinks that Kartoum does not
"think" and "reason" to try his own thinking and reasoning at
inventing for Kartoum's door a latch that a keeper can easily and
surely open and close at a distance of ten feet, and that will be
Kartoum-proof. As for ourselves, three or four seemingly
intelligent officers and keepers, and a capable foreman of
construction, have all they can do to keep ahead of that one
elephant, so great is his ingenuity in thwarting our ways and
means to restrain him.

In about two days of effort our elephant keepers taught Gunda to
receive a coin from the hand of a visitor, or pick it off the