Nothing Creates A Greater Surprise Among The Negroes On The Sea-
Coast Than The Eagerness Displayed By The European Traders To
Procure Elephants' Teeth, It Being Exceedingly Difficult To Make
Them Comprehend To What Use It Is Applied.
Although they are shown
knives with ivory handles, combs and toys of the same material, and
are convinced that the ivory thus manufactured was originally parts
of a tooth, they are not satisfied.
They suspect that this
commodity is more frequently converted in Europe to purposes of far
greater importance, the true nature of which is studiously concealed
from them, lest the price of ivory should be enhanced. They cannot,
they say, easily persuade themselves that ships would be built and
voyages undertaken to procure an article which had no other value
than that of furnishing handles to knives, etc., when pieces of wood
would answer the purpose equally well.
Elephants are very numerous in the interior of Africa, but they
appear to be a distinct species from those found in Asia.
Blumenbach, in his figures of objects of natural history, has given
good drawings of a grinder of each, and the variation is evident.
M. Cuvier also has given in the Magasin Encyclopedique a clear
account of the difference between them. As I never examined the
Asiatic elephant, I have chosen rather to refer to those writers
than advance this as an opinion of my own. It has been said that
the African elephant is of a less docile nature than the Asiatic,
and incapable of being tamed.
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