ELEPHANT TUSKS 403 



this elephant, which died so soon after it was brought to 

 Europe.* 



A Chinese writer of the thirteenth century who treats 

 of the various articles of commerce in his day says that 

 from the Somali Coast were obtained elephant tusks of 

 large size, sometimes weighing more than 100 catties (about 

 133 pounds). t A still earlier Chinese authority, the Yu- 

 ang-tsa-tsu, dating from the ninth century, affirms that 

 the natives of this coast used the tusks of elephants as 

 offensive weapons in their fighting. { 



In an old English version of one of the Alexander ro- 

 mances, so popular in medieval times, occurs a passage 

 showing the exaggerated ideas prevailing among very early 

 writers as to the number of elephants used for warlike opera- 

 tions. Describing the elephants in the battle array of the 

 Persian king Darius, Alexander's opponent, the romancer 



says :** 



Fourty thousand, alle astore 

 Olifauntes let go to-fore 

 Apon everiche olifaunt a castel, 

 Theryn XII knyghtis y-armed wel. 

 They schoUe holde the skirmyng§ 

 Ageyns Alisaundre the kyng. 



De Vries, writing toward the end of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, probably greatly exaggerated the number of elephant 

 tusks brought to India, which he puts at six hundred thou- 

 sand ; part of this import went to China. He reports elephant 

 tusks weighing as much as two hundred pounds "apothe- 



*Dictionnaire d'Archeologie Chretienne, ed. by Dom Fernand Cabral and Dom II. 

 Leclercq, Paris, 1911, Fasc. xxv, col. 693, Art. Charlemagne. 



fChau Ju-Kua, " Chu-fan-chi (A Description of Barbarous Peoples)," trans, by Frie- 

 drich Hirth, and W. W. Rockhill, St. Petersburg, 1911, p. 129. 



Jlbid., p. 129. 



**Thomas Wright, "The Archaeological Album," London, n. d., p. 177. 



§Skinnish line. 



