Umboo, the Elephant by Garis, Howard Roger, 1873-1962

"I did not come from Africa; I came from an Indian jungle," said Umboo. "My friends, the African elephants, are much larger than I am, and they are wilder and fiercer, and so they are hardly every caught for the circus."

"I remember a great big elephant in a circus I was once with--not this one, though," said Humpo, the camel. "His name was Jug--no it was not Jug, and it wasn't Jig, but it began with a J."

"Maybe it was Jumbo," suggested Umboo.

"That was it--Jumbo!" cried Humpo. "He was a very big elephant."

"Yes, I guess he was," said Umboo. "I have heard of him, but I never saw him. He was an African elephant, and they are all large. Poor Jumbo!"

"Why do you say that?" asked Chako the monkey. "Poor Jumbo?"

"Because he is dead," said Umboo. "Poor Jumbo was struck by one of those big puffing animals, of steam and steel and iron, that pull our circus train over the shiny rails."

"You mean a choo-choo-locomotive-steam-engine," said Woo-Uff, the lion.

"I suppose that is the name," said Umboo. "Anyhow, Jumbo was hit by an engine, and, big as he was, it killed him. His bones, or skeleton, are in a museum in New York now."

"Is New York a jungle?" asked Gink, who had not been with the circus very long.

"New York a jungle? Of course not!" laughed Snarlie, the tiger. "New York is a big city, and sometimes we circus animals are taken there to help with the show. I've been in New York lots of times."

"Well, don't let it make you proud," said Chako, the other monkey. "I have been there myself, and I'd much rather be in the jungle."

"Say, are we going to listen to you animals talk or hear the story Umboo is going to tell us?" asked Humpo, the camel. "I thought he was going to make us forget the heat."

"So I am," said Umboo, in a kind voice, "Only I wanted to speak about old Jumbo, There used to be a song about him, many years ago. It went something like this, and I heard a little English boy sing it:

"That's the song they used to sing about Jumbo, more than twenty years ago," said Umboo.

"My! How can you remember so far back?" asked Chako.

"Oh, we elephants live to a good old age," said Umboo. "Why, I am fifty years old now, and yet I am young! Some of the elephants in the jungle lived to be a hundred and twenty years old!"

"Oh, my!" cried Chako. "Did they have circuses as long ago as that?"

"Yes, but not the kind that traveled about, and showed in white tents," said Umboo. "But I have heard my father and mother say that we elephants live to be very old."

"And can you remember so far back, when you were a baby in the jungle?" asked Humpo.