ELEPHANTS AND IVORY 1. Slaves and Ivory. By MAJOR HENRY DARLEY. Witherby. 1926. 1924. 3. The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter. By W. D. M. BELL. Country Life Library. 1923. 4. The Mammoth and Mammoth Hunting in North-East Siberia. By BASSETT DIGBY. Witherby. 1926. 5. Rowland Ward's Records of Big Game. By J. G. DOLLMAN and J. B. BURLACE. 1922. 6. The African Elephant and Its Hunters. By DENNIS D. LYELL. Heath Cranton. 1924. NEXT EXT to gold and precious stones, ivory has, more than any other substance required for the decoration and delight of mankind, been sought vigorously and systematically from the earliest ages of the past. It seems to have been universally desired from the very dawn of civilisation, while even in prehistoric times man seems to have betaken himself to the primitive decoration of tusks. The Bible has many a reference to its beauties and its value, and in the East the wonderful carvings of patient generations have from a far distant period yielded immeasurable treasures of art for the gratification of the powerful, the noble and the rich. Until 180 years ago the supply of this beautiful and treasured substance seemed inexhaustible. Asia still possessed great numbers of elephants; while in Africa the vast stores of the interior, although to some small extent known and utilised by the early Egyptians, were unrealised and almost unexploited. Elephants were trapped and destroyed by natives, but only in small numbers, for they were formidable beasts to attack with spear and arrow. Until the introduction of fire-arms little impression was made upon their legions, even in the wild areas nearest to the civilized Egypt of those days. At the other end of the great continent, when the Dutch in South Africa began their first efforts in colonisation in the year 1652, they found elephants scattered in great herds over much of the territory, wherever, in fact, these animals could find suitable feeding. Hunting for ivory began at an early period of the N Dutch occupation, but with the primitive firearms of those days the processs of extermination-now almost complete from the Zambesi to the Cape Peninsula-was very slow. Ivory had been long in use among the Kaffir and other Bantu tribes; and the writer can remember Kaffir chiefs many years ago in Cape Colony who were still proud of the thick and magnificent armlets-orangecoloured from age and usage-which had been handed down to them by their forefathers. Down to the beginning of the nineteenth century the Dutch used rests for their long pieces, and with such primitive weapons they were unable to destroy many of the great tusk-bearing mammals which they found so abundant. Even down to the time of that great modern hunter, F. C. Selous, who first made his appearance in the veldt in 1872, the Transvaal Boers were still using heavy smooth-bore elephant guns, weighing 15 to 16 pounds apiece, carrying spherical bullets running four to the pound, and discharged by 17 drams of trade powder. Selous, then an enthusiastic youngster, on his way up country, had his only good rifle stolen, and bought one of these cheap smooth-bores, termed by the Dutch hunters roers, from the noise of their explosion. With this cumbrous and punishing weapon he hunted on foot for two or three seasons, slew many elephants, and gained much ivory. I have often handled this extraordinary fire-arm and marvelled at the strength, energy and courage required for its use by Selous and the Dutch hunters of his time in a hot and exhausting climate. After 1874, Selous abandoned this primitive weapon and betook himself to more up-to-date and less trying rifles. Yet, even with their old-fashioned weapons the Boers of South Africa had cleared most of the Cape Colony of elephants by the beginning of the last century, and were already exploiting the regions beyond the Orange River. The narratives of Sparrmann, Le Vaillant and Sir John Barrow, towards the close of the eighteenth century, and the scientific expeditions of Burchell (1813-14) and Dr. Andrew Smith (1834) in the earlier years of the nineteenth began to attract the attention of British sportsmen to the wonderful hunting grounds of Southern Africa. In 1837 that enthusiastic gunner and zoologist, Captain (afterwards Sir William) Cornwallis Harris, made his famous expedition and penetrated regions hitherto virgin to the white hunter. In the country now known as the Transvaal he encountered elephants in the Magaliesberg hills in amazing plenty, and shot what ivory he wanted. Some of his descriptions are worth transcribing. After killing his first elephant he and his party came upon a valley where "the whole face of the landscape was actually covered with wild elephants. There could not have been fewer than 300 within the scope of our vision. Every height and green knoll was dotted over with groups of them, whilst the bottom of the glen exhibited a dense and sable living mass-their colossal forms being seen emerging into the open glades, bearing branches in their trunks, with which they indolently defended themselves from the flies." Later in the day the sportsman passed three other large herds. On another hunt," a verdant glen, some two or three miles in length, was completely studded with clumps of elephants." A great naturalist as well as a great sportsman, Cornwallis Harris is a faithful witness, and his accounts are to be relied upon. What a glorious hunting veldt he must have traversed! But even while he was viewing these wonderful scenes the Boers of the Great Trek were advancing into the Transvaal country, and in the same year (1837) they defeated the Matabele Zulus, drove them north of the Limpopo and took possession of the whole region. By the year 1870 the Boers had cleared most of the Transvaal of elephants, and their hardiest and most restless hunters were at work in regions far beyond the Transvaal borders. Meanwhile, Cornwallis Harris's two fine volumes-his "Wild Sports of Southern Africa," and "Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of Southern Africa," both illustrated in colour from his own drawings-had attracted much notice by British sportsmen, among them Gordon Cumming and W. C. Oswell, who penetrated in the 'forties far towards the Zambesi and gathered immense spoil in the shape of trophies and ivory. That great hunter, Oswell, with his friend Murray, accompanied Livingstone on his first journey and with him discovered Lake Ngami in 1849. All that region then carried vast numbers of elephants. Livingstone himself has told us that in the year 1850 no fewer than 900 elephants were slain in the neighbourhood of the Lake. A book by Gordon Cumming on big game hunting attracted to South Africa William Charles Baldwin, another of the great line of English hunters. Between 1852 and 1860 he was shooting in Zululand and in the Lake Ngami and Zambesi regions and gathered much ivory. Many other British, Boer and Griqua hunters were at the same period all hard at work. Baldwin, like the Boers, did all his hunting on horseback and was very successful. His fine book, "African Hunting from Natal to the Zambesi," published in 1863, a wonderful narrative of adventure, in turn rivetted the attention of many other adventurers, including the late F. C. Selous. The writer can remember, as a boy, the fine illustrations, by Wolf and Zwecker, of that wonderful book and the fascination it had for the youthful mind. And so the game went on. Weapons became more and more perfect and even the primitive hunting Boers were by the 'seventies of the last century discarding their 4-bore elephant guns and betaking themselves to Westley Richards, Martini-Henry and other first-class and, for the gunner, far less punishing rifles. In 1881, Franz Joubert, who had hunted with Baldwin in the 'fifties, was with his commando at Laing's Nek, fighting successfully against the British by the aid of first-class modern sporting rifles. It is scarcely to be wondered at that poor men eagerly pursued elephants for ivory. Even as far back as 1837, Cornwallis Harris stated that a pair of good tusks was worth to the hunter £60 to £70. William Finaughty, whose name is less known, but who was a mighty hunter, followed Baldwin, and between 1864 and 1871 gathered much ivory in the regions between the Limpopo and the Zambesi. In 1866 he shot ninety-five elephants and brought out tusks scaling 5000lbs. He was then getting 6s. 10дd. per lb. for his ivory. In 1869 he killed 111 elephants during the season and his ivory brought him £1,750. He once shot 10 during a day's hunt. South African elephants never produced the magnificent teeth of the great pachyderms living in the Nile regions, and Finaughty's best pair of tusks weighed no more than 250lbs. the pair. While Finaughty was hard at work, Boer and other hunters were all hotly in search of ivory. He speaks of Jan Viljoen, a famous Transvaal Voer-trekker, who with his sons killed no fewer than 210 elephants in the year 1866. The Dutch were very wasteful in their methods and slew freely cows and young bulls-anything carrying ivory. The most wanton slaughter of which the writer has record was that of the Van Zyl family, who, in the early 'seventies, drove a herd of 104 elephants into a marsh and killed every one before sun-down. This happened in the Okavango country beyond Lake Ngami. F. C. Selous, the most careful and chivalrous of big game sportsmen, appeared in the hunting veldt of South Africa in 1872, just after Finaughty's retirement. He hunted ivory for a living, but he never shot wastefully or unnecessarily, although in his time he achieved much ivory. By the year 1885 he had come to the conclusion that the game was scarcely worth the candle; the finest elephants had been shot out south of the Zambesi and he turned his attention to other pursuits. Nothing in nature could resist such slaughter as I have described, and by the year 1890 the whole of South Africa, including the splendid Natal, Zululand and Amatonga game countries, had been practically cleared of elephants. In the far north a troop of two remained in Khama's country, Bamangwato, and in the Matabele and Mashuna countries now known as Southern Rhodesia, but few big bulls, carrying good teeth, were among them. Curiously enough there was a small stock remainin the extreme south of Cape Colony, where two herds, protected by the Government, were to be found in the Knysna Forest, and the Addo Bush, near Port Elizabeth. The Knysna Forest elephants have by this time vanished and quite recently the Addo Bush herd, which for years had been a nuisance to neighbouring farmers, were released from the protection of a hundred years, and are now greatly reduced in numbers. The small remnant, in the dense jungle they inhabit, are very difficult to get at and very savage; but they, too, must ere long disappear. The fact is, farming and elephants cannot flourish together and in the long run farming is not likely to be the sufferer. The ivory trade of South Africa naturally began to dwindle under the assault of these numerous and determined elephant hunters between 1840 and 1875. But even in the latter year £60,402 worth of ivory was exported from Cape Colony; and I can remember, on my first visit to that country in 1876, seeing many a waggon-load of fine ivory rolling down country to Port Elizabeth. At that time there were only 60 miles of railway in all South Africa-the piece of line from Cape Town to Worcester. Ten years later, in 1886, the export from Cape Colony had dwindled to £2,150. From Natal, in 1873, £17,199 worth of ivory was exported. In 1885, but £4,100 worth. The discovery of the Nile sources and the great lakes in the |