484 



HISTORY OF 



mounted, and armed with lances, attack the elephant alternately, 

 each relieving the other, as they see their companion pressed, till 

 the beast is subdued. Three Dutchmen, brothers, who had 

 made large fortunes by this business, determined to retire to 



when the Etruscan attributes of royalty were sceptres and thrones of ivory ; 

 xvhen the ancient kings and magistrates of Rome sat in ivory seats, when 

 colossal ivory statues of their gods, far exceeding, in their vast proportions 

 and their splendid ornaments, all the magnificence of the moderns, were 

 raised by the Greeks of the age of Pericles ; and when immense stores of 

 ivory, to be employed with similar prodigality, were collected in the tern, 

 pies. In the time of Pliny, the vast consumption of ivory for articles of 

 luxury had compelled the Romans to seek for it in another hemisphere ; 

 Africa had ceased to furnish elephants' tusks, except of the smallest kind. 

 A centiu-y or two earlier, according to Polybius, ivory was so plentiful in 

 Africa, that the tribes on the confines of Ethiopia employed elephants' tusks 

 as door-posts, and for the palisades thai inclosed theii- fields. When the 

 Roman power fell into decay, and tlio commerce of Eiu-ope w ith Africa was 

 nearly suspended for centuries, th« elephant was again mimolcsted in those 

 regions. He was no longer slaughtered to administer to the pomp of tem- 

 ples, or to provide ornaments for palaces. The ivory tablets of the citizens 

 <if ancient Rome {lihri elephantini) had fallen into disuse ; and the toys of 

 modern France were constructed of less splendid materials. At Angola, 

 elephants' teeth had become so plentiful, because so useless as an article of 

 trade, that in the beginning of the seventeenth century, according to Andrew 

 Battell, an Englishman, who served in t'n' Portuguese armies, tlie natives 

 " had their idols of wood in the midst of their towns, fa.=hioned like a negro, 

 and at the foot thereof was a great heap of elephants' teeth, containing three 

 or four toTis of them : these were piled in the earth, and upon them were' 

 wt the skulls of dead men, which they had slain in the wars, in monument; 

 of their victory." The people of Angola and Congo, when the Portugfuese 

 first established themselves there, were found to have preserved an immense 

 number of elephants' teeth, for centuries, and had applied them to such 

 mperstitious uses. As long as any part of the stock remained, the vessels 

 of Portugal carried large quantities to Europe : and this traffic formed one 

 of the most profitable branches of the early trade with Africa. About the 

 middle of the seventeenth centiu-y the store was e.Khausted. But the demand 

 for ivory which had been thus renewed in Eiu-ope, after the lapse of so 

 many centiu-ies, oft'ored too great a temptation to the poor African to be 

 allowed by him to remain without a supply. The destruction of elephants 

 fur their teeth «-as again unremittingly pursued throughout those extensive 

 forests; and that havoc has gone on with little, if any, diminution, to our 



own day. 



It would be difficult to estimate with any pretension to accuracy the pre- 

 sent consumption of ivory in Europe. Its use must have been considerably 

 diminished, on the one hand, by the changes of taste, which have dispensed 

 with the ivory beds, and ivory chairs, that adorned the palaces of princes in 

 th<' an^e of Leo X. ; and have displaced the inlaid tables and cabinets of a 

 ccMtury later, by articles of furniture distinguished rather for the excellence 

 of their workmanshii> than for the cost of their material. But, on the other 



