WHERE ELEPHANTS DIE IN PEACE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7449, 25 May 1911, Page 9

WHERE ELEPHANTS DIE IN PEACE

Among travellers’ tales is ono which assorts that elephants, when they feel death approaching, retire to some secret place to die in peace. ' “The Dying Grounds of JOlephonts" is tho subject of an article, by Mr Douglas Blackburn, in the March issue of "Chambers’s Journal." Experienced hunters tell us, he says, that the rarest thins met with in the haunts of the elephant. in Africa is tho dead body of one which has dieu a natural death. Vultures and the red ant may account for the flesh, but what about the bones and tusks? Many people will accept the theory that tho elephant seeks cover in which to die; what they will" not believe is that hundreds of elephants select the same spot. An argument in favour of the dying-grounds is that traders have .sometimes been able to procure at short notice a large supply of ivory when It was generally believed that (he stock was small. A supply of tusks which could only bo possible by a wholesale massacre naturally provokes suspicion and inquiry. It was Emin Pasha who first revea'ed the existence of .the dying grounds, and ho explained that severa’ hunters who professed to live by their prowess as elephant hunters owed their success to having discovered ono of these dying grounds. African professional hunters believe that Emin knew of more than one dj-ing ground, and that the promoters of the relief expedition were as anxious to relieve the ivory as tho explorer. When n native or a white man has the good for tune to discover one of the dying grounds, self-interest naturally prompts him to keep the secret to nimself, and,. consequently, the existence of them does not become common knowledge.