People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1897 — The World’s Ivory Depot. [ARTICLE]

The World’s Ivory Depot.

The City of Anvers, in Belgium, says the Paris L’Hlustration, is a great depot for African ivory. The November sale, the fourth this year, assembled tusks weighing about 123,200 pounds. Among them was one weighing nearly 330 pounds. In assorting tusks, those are considered the choicest which permit of the making of billiard balls from the largest point. Among the tusks most sought for, which must weigh from about 40 to 155 pounes, the most esteemed are the class called by the English “bangles,” which are sound, round, and glossy, and serve the natives for rings and bracelets for arms and ankles.

Started about five years ago, the ivory business of Anvers is now the most important in the world. The sale for 1895 amounted to nearly 600.000 pounds, of which over 155,071 pounds came from the Congo Free State. Some days before, the sale at Anvers the periodical collection is shown. Most of this ivory comes, as above stated, from the Belgian Congo, though large quantities are shipped from there that Emin Pasha and Lupton Bey had gathered in the Soudan.

The average annual consumption of ivory from 1889 to 1893 was not far from 1,500,000 pounds, of which America took nearly 260,000. At Anvers, the world’s ivory market, the product is worth about $1.65 a pound. Is the elephant being exterminated? Yes. Is nothing being done to preserve it? Yes, in the Congo at least. By official decree it is forbidden to hunt the elephant outside .certain pres-cribed-seasons. This prohibition is addressed to the native chiefs of European districts. Moreover, these chiefs and their deputies alone have the right to hunt the elephant, and besides, each -chief must pay a tax equivalent to half the ivory taken by him or his people. Futhermore, it is discussed whether, in the Congo

country, there should not b€ established some elephant farms to perpetuate the elephant in th£ same way the English are Foster ing the ostrich in Egypt.