280 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



parent, more especially for use in the manufacture of but- 

 tons and similar small objects for which ivory had been 

 used. In this way a valuable article of commerce was 

 introduced, and the trade has increased so rapidly that 

 20,000 tons of the nuts are now exported annually from 

 Ecuador alone, the value of this product amounting to 

 $1,700,000. In addition to this both Panama and Colombia 

 send a continually increasing supply to Europe and the 

 United States. This palm flourishes in southern Panama 

 and in the region of the west coast of Colombia, Ecuador, 

 and northern Peru. The tree is said to begin bearing 

 in its sixth year and to live from fifty to one hundred 

 years.* 



The work of gathering the nuts is largely in the hands of 

 the natives, who secure from the merchants or exporters, on 

 credit, a simple outfit, consisting of a machete, an ax, a gun, 

 some ammunition, and also supplies of rice, lard, and beans 

 or lentils. The price of this is paid at the end of the season 

 in ivory nuts or rubber. The parties of natives paddle up 

 the rivers to the forest lands, to reach the largest of which a 

 trip of from three to six days is needed. Arrived at their 

 destination, each party encamps on the banks of a stream, 

 building a rough shelter with a palm-leaf roof. The nuts, 

 as they are gathered, are deposited in woven baskets two 

 feet high and a foot in diameter, and are transported to the 

 encampment either on mule back or on the shoulders of 

 the native gatherers. When some 15 or 20 tons of nuts 

 have been accumulated, the filled baskets are placed on 

 rafts made on the spot from sections of peeled trunks of 

 the cork tree called balsa, and floated down to the point 

 of delivery. The merchant pays for them at the rate of 2 



*The details embraced in this and the following paragraphs are taken from the valuable 

 paper of Mr. Edward Abbes of the Pan-American ytaff, published in the Bulletin of the 

 Pan-American Union for August, 1913, pp. 19^2-208, and entitled "Tagua Vegetable Ivory." 



