130 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



ivory of a light yellow hue. These dippers exhibited signs of 

 long use and were probably made many years ago. In one 

 of them a semicircular piece of the bone, near the handle, 

 has been broken along the grain of the tusk and is mended 

 by three stitches.* 



Many of the natives of Guinea wore, in the seventeenth 

 century, three or four broad ivory arm-bands, frequently 

 engraved with a cross design. These with the coral neck- 

 laces brought by Dutch and other European traders and so 

 highly valued by the natives of the Guinea Coast constituted 

 their chief and favourite ornaments. f 



Carved elephant tusks from the old Negro monarchy of 

 Benin are preserved in the Ethnographical Collection of the 

 Museum of Natural History in Vienna. The conquest of 

 Benin, West Africa, by the English in 1897 spread a knowl- 

 edge of the curious art of this native civilization, although 

 some early travellers visiting this region had already written 

 of the strange customs and half civilization of the inhabi- 

 tants. 



Some surprisingly interesting specimens of ivory carving 

 by native African artists were brought from the capital city 

 of Benin by Mr. W. J. Hoder, when it was captured 

 by the British punitive expedition, on February 18, 1897. 

 Some of the best of these are on exhibition in the Harriman 

 Museum, Forest Hill, England. One of the specimens is a 

 mace head, or the head of an official staff, such as was carried 

 before the high executioner — a most important personage in 

 old Benin, or before a Ju Ju priest. It represents a king 

 or chief — ^holding in one hand a sword and in the other a 

 bell such as was rung to announce the offering of a human 



*John Murdoch, "The Point Barrow Eskimo"; Ninth Report of the Bureau of Ethnology^ 

 1887-1888, Washington, 1892, pp. 102, 103, Figs. 40, 41. 



tS. de Vries, "Curieuse Aenmerckingen der bysonderste Oost en West-Indische Verwon- 

 derens-waerdige Dingen," Utrecht, 1682, Pt. Ill, p. 95. 



