The Andrew County Republican. [volume] (Savannah, Mo.) 1871-1876, 1874-11-27
THE ELEPHANT DYING OUT.

Somewhere in the marvellous yarn of
Sinbad the Sailor, contrived for the
benefit of the all-puissant Haroun Al
rasekid and Giafir, his Vizier, is an ac-
count Of the burying-place of the ele-
infants. Sinbad, surrounded by the
monstrous brutes, has scaled a tree, in
which he is besieged for seven days and
seven nights on the eighth day an old
bull. the "rogue" of the herd, rends
the tree up by the roots, and Sinbad,
falling headlong to the ground, judges
II the safest course to feign death. The
elephant, disdaining to wreak his
vengeance upon a lifeless enemy, picks
the old sailor up and quietly carries
him to the great burial place of the
tribe-a hill some miles in circuit, sur
rounded by impenetrable forests, and
thickly covered with the bones and
tusks of generation after generation of
"the brute which bears between its
eyes the serpent of a hand" S;nbad,
with c~ommendable prudence, continues
TO counterfeit death until not IN ele-
phant is in sight: and then, with In
alacrity equally commendable, loads a
raft with picked tusks, makes his way
with them to Bagdad, and SO finds him
self once again a rich man
Modern research has gone far to re-
habilitate the credit of Sinbad the
Sailor. We know that the long nara
tive of the seven voyages is no idle fairy
tale, but that it embodies the genuine
tradition of old navigators, such as
Hanno, and that its main facts are SUBJ
stantially accurate ; the Valley of Dia-
monds actually exists in Ceylon; the
great roc once built its nest in NADIA
gascar, and tapped its monstrous wings
to and fro between the island and the
mainland and there is good ground to
believe that the tale of the great burial
place of the elephant race is no mere
fable, but that high up in the table-land
of Central Africa, on the further side Of
Tanganyikl, in districts where the white
mans foot has yet trod, ivory is
to be found as plentifully as in the fos-
sill beds of Siberia. whence are dug up
the large mammoth tusks that furnish
nine-tenths OF the raw material operated
upon by London ivory-turners. In
deed, it would almost seem as if the
energy of the Zanzibar merchants had
at length found a way to Sinbad's
charmed hill.
Within the last year the importation
has doubled itself. Whence came all
these tusks? Has the Valhalla of Sin
bad been actually discovered, and do
the chiefs whose huts cluster around
T~anganyika, and under the shadow of
the Mountains Of the Moon, know Of a
veritable Tom Tiddler's ground where
ivory car be picked up, as in Siberia it
can be dug up, by the ton or does
each pair of tusks that finds its way to
England represent a slaughtered ele,
plant, and is a war of determination be-
ing waged, the ultimate effect of which
must be to render the huge brute as ez-
tinct as the dinoris itself?
The latter, we fear, is the true answer.
The elephant, like the whale, is dying
out. In India he is becoming almost as
rare as the red deer in England. The
hunters have driven him further and
further inland; unless something be
done to protect him, he Will before long
become, on the main continent at any
rate, altogether extinct, and Sahib will
have to import his elephants from Bur,
nah and Ceylon, much as England i'm
ports horses from Ireland, and foxes
from any country that will send them
in sufficient numbers and of sufficient
size and strength.