Jumbo is undoubtedly the best-known Elephant that ever lived. In 1861 he was captured
as a baby in Abyssinia (Ethiopia). At that time he was only 3 1/2 feet tall...
Jumbo was shipped to Paris where he remained in the Zoological Gardens for three years.
He was then transferred to the London Zoological Gardens, and was used for a riding
animal, countless numbers of children riding on his back. He became very popular with
the boys and girls of England. He was in London seventeen years, growing all the time,
until he was so big that P.T. Barnum, American circus man, became interested. He paid
$10,000 for the great creature, and brought him to the United States in 1882. As you can
imagine, the children of England were filled with sorrow when their friend sailed away.
In the United States and Canada, Jumbo was placed on exhibition, and he became very
famous. His life in America was very short, however, after three years of travel with the
Barnum circus he was struck and killed by a locomotive as he was being loaded on a
train in St. Thomas Ontario. At his death, Jumbo was about twenty-five years old.
His skin was mounted and sent to Tuft's College, Boston Massachusetts, and his skeleton
is mounted in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. There has been
much controversy about Jumbo's actual height. He was advertised as 11 1/2 feet tall, but
the taxidermist who mounted his skin found his height to be, by actual measurement,
10 feet 9 1/2 inches.
|
