Daily Kennebec journal., 1875-02-23

THE ELEPHANT COUNTRY.

for the benefit of the allpuissant Haroun
Alraschid. and Giaffir, his vizier, is an ac-
count of the burial place of the elephants.
Sinbad, surrounded by the monstrous
brutes, has scaled tree. in which he is be-
seiged 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 it is the safest course to
feign death. The elephant, disdaining to
wreak its rage upon lifeless enemy,
picks the old sailor up and quietly carries
him to the great burial place of the tribe
"a high Hill some miles in circuit, sur
rounded by impenetrable forests and
thickly covered with the bones and tusks
of generation after generation OF 1.-THE
brute which bears between its eyes the
serpent for hand" Sinbad, with COM
mendable prudence, continues to counter
felt death till not an elephant is in sight,
and then, with an alacrity commendaoie,
loads a raft with picked tusks, makes his
way with them to Bagdad, and so finds
himself rich man. Modern research has
gone far to rehabilitate the credit of Sin
bad the sailor We know that the long
narrative of his seven voyages is no idle
fairy tale, but that it embodies the gen.
uine tradition of old navigators, such as
Hanno, and that its main facts are sub
stantially accurate. The valley of the dia
monds actually exists in Ceylon the great
rukh once built its nest in Madagascar,
and tapped its monstrous wings to and
fro between the island and the mainland,
and there is good ground to believe that
their tale of the great burial place of the
elephant race is no mere fable, but high
upon the tableland Of Cen raj Africa, on
the farthest side OF Nanganyika, ivory is
as plentiful as in the fossil beds OF Siberia,
whence are dug up the huge mammoth
tusks that furnish nine-tenths Of the raw
material operated upon by our London
ivory turner's. Indeed, it would almost
seem as if the energy of the Zanzibar
merchants had at length found way to
Sinbad's charmed hill, for within the last
year the importation ofivory has doubled !;
or does each pair of tusks that finds its
way to England represent slaughtered
elephant, and is war of determination
being waged, the ultimate effect of which
must be to render the huge brute as ex-
tinct as the dinornis itself?
The latter, we fear, is the 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 farther and farther inland; un
less something be done to protect him, he
will before long become, upon the main
continent, at any rate, altogether extinct.
and sahib will have to import his elephants
from Brmah and Ceylon, much as we in
England import our horses from Ireland,
and our hunters from any country that
will send them to us in sufficient number
and of sufficient size and strength. In
Africa, it is true, the evil is not yet past
remedy. Over the vast table-lands Of that
unknown continent the elephant still roves
in countless droves, and still holds in un-
disputed possession vast tracts to which
rum and glass beads. cast-iron muskets
and clay pipes, printed calico and coarse
gunpowder, have never yet found their
way. The respite, however. will proba-
bly, be but brief. Almost daily, caravans
start from the Zanzibar coast to the inte-
rior, carrying with them all that the ma
tive heart needs to make it glad, and will
ing to take payment in ivory for all that
they have to offer. For ten or dozen
large tusks the African chief can dress his
wives out in beads and striped calico, fur
nish himself and his minister with rum
patiently until next years hunting season
commences. The danger which the chase
involves is exaggerated. The elephant is
a dangerous beast to meet face to face,
but he is easily crcumvented by craft.
He can be shot with poisoned arrows; he
can be frightened by midnight fires and
driven into pitfalls; or, ifthe hunter have
the requisite nerve and courage, he can
be followed and hamstrung. And so the
butchery goes on.
Year by year Zanzibar sends inland q
large number of bales, and year by year
O large number of tusks is carried down
to the coast. We may regret the idle
waste, but we are powerless TO stop it.
Nor is it, after all, easy to convince ma
tive chief that it is his duty to allow the
elephant to multiply in peace. We here
in England are burning up our coal, and
leaving posterity to take care of itself and
pay its own national debt; and we can
hardly expect the woody headed African |
to display virtue of which we ourselves
are ignorant. What is it to him if in q
century or so the elephant be altogether
extinct, so long as in the interval he is
able to drink rum and to dress out his
ebony charmer in gaudy yellow and red.
But after all, rapidly extinct as the great
brute is becoming, it is yet certain that we
shall have supplied his place long before
we begin to feel his loss. The tramway
will supplant the elephant in India as
surely as the train has supplanted the
stage coach in England; and science will
discover some material fully as elastic as
ivory, and equally capable OF doing SER
vice in the shape of billiard ball-the
one and only article of modern luxury for
which at present ivory is absolutely indis-
pensable. Indeed, it is not improbable
that, long before the elephant is finally
extinct, science may have taught us to
fuse glass so as to impart to it all the elias
ticity of ivory, exactly as it has already
Iaugni us 10 supply ns paoe ol Inc pam
that of sponge with fibrous India rubber.
-Touolotl Tele0r0nH