Alpine Elephant

I went to the brown-bag lunch lecture at the Whatcom Museum today. The speaker was John Hoyte, an Englishman living in Bellingham.

In 1959, John borrowed a female Indian elephant named Jumbo from the Turin Zoo and walked her across the Italian Alps via Mount Cenis Pass, the route he believed Hannibal took on his legendary expedition to attack the Romans. He gave a very entertaining account of the trip (sponsored by Life magazine) and the logistics involved. The elephant had leather boots with studded soles made by Lotus, a well-known English shoe manufacturer.

The flag on the podium in my photo is from an earlier scouting trip taken by John and a friend to help them decide which route they thought was the one Hannibal took.

There are some photos of the elephant trip on my Flickr site.