Elephant Story

<p> The newspapers called him Overshadowing Monarch Mastodon Behemoth of Holy Writ and Prodigious Mountain. He was the main event at the greatest show on earth: Jumbo at around 6-1/2 tons and almost 12 feet tall the biggest elephant anyone had ever seen. Jumbo's mere presence in the Barnum Bailey and Hutchinson circus guaranteed an additional $3000 a day in box office receipts. More of an exhibit than a performer Jumbo was simply paraded around the three rings. But still the people came just to marvel at the size of this monster pachyderm.</p><p> This work traces Jumbo's capture in East Africa his life in the London Zoo the controversy over his sale for $10000 to American showman P.T. Barnum his journey across the Atlantic his life as the most famous attraction in Barnum's circus and his tragic death in a railway accident in Canada in 1885.</p>