254 WILD ANIMALS. 



that, even for commercial purposes, annually takes place. 

 England alone imports over a million and a quarter pounds of 

 ivory every year, which is mostly African, and represents the 

 death of thirty thousand elephants. Several other countries are 

 but a little way behind in their demand for this beautiful and 

 valuable commodity ; an estimate can, therefore, soon be made of 

 the fearful numbers that are slain for ivory, add this to the 

 numbers that are hunted for the sake of the flesh only by the 

 Kaffir and Hottentot hunters, and the reported disappearance of 

 the elephant in districts where formerly they abounded can hardly 

 cause any surprise. The elephant is, moreover, the slowest 

 breeder of all animals and, therefore, the more easily exter- 

 minated. The native Africans resort to most cruel methods of 

 killing animals, especially those of the larger kind. One writer 

 asserts that even now they sometimes adopt the horrible and 

 barbarous practice of burning whole herds of elephants in the 

 jungle simply to obtain the ivory. 



This mode of procuring the article is described by Dr. George 

 Schweinfarth.^ He writes that when the dry, thick and high grass 

 is fired " the elephants have no possible escape from certain death. 

 The destruction is carried on by wholesale. Thousands of hunts- 

 men and drivers are gathered together from far and wide by means 

 of signals sounded on huge wooden drums. Every one who is 

 capable of bearing arms at all is converted into a huntsman, just 

 as every one becomes a soldier when the national need demands. 

 No resource for escape is left to the poor brutes. Driven by the 

 flames into masses, they huddle together, young and old ; they 

 cover their bodies with grass, on which they pump water from 

 their trunks as long as they can; but all in vain. They are 

 ultimately either suffocated by the clouds of smoke, or over- 

 powered by the heat, or are so miserably burnt that at last and 

 ere long they succumb to the cruel fate that has been designed 

 for them by ungrateful man. The coup de grace may n6w and 

 then be given them by the blow of some ready lance, but too 

 often, as may be seen from the tusks that are bought, the 

 miserable beasts must have perished in the agonies of a death by 

 2 "The Heart of Africa," 1878. 



