ELEPHANT TUSKS 407 



sculptured tusk, which had long marked one of the stages 

 in a royal progress of the renowned Shamba. Centuries 

 ago these Nyamis are said to have borne the title Chembe 

 Kunji, or "God upon earth."* 



The half -legendary tales of elephant burial grounds, with 

 their long accumulated stock of valuable tusks, have little 

 or no foundation in fact. A story told, however, in regard 

 to an episode of the suppression of the Arab slave trade by 

 the Powers, a movement largely due to Livingstone's pas- 

 sionate denunciations of this iniquitous practice, may perhaps 

 point to the existence of a hidden ivory treasure. It is 

 stated that a party of Arab slave raiders, who in their pre- 

 cipitate retreat to avoid attack and capture were obliged 

 to get rid of all unnecessary impedimenta, buried a large 

 number of elephant tusks of which they had secured posses- 

 sion on the borders of a small lake in the Eastern Congo, or, 

 possibly, in the bed of the lake, beneath shallow water.f 



We read so often of successful elephant hunts that some 

 may be almost inclined to fancy that, for the well-armed and 

 equipped European at least, this sport can scarcely be looked 

 upon as a hazardous one. But it is stated that the saying 

 goes among professional elephant hunters that sooner or 

 later the hunter is sure to lose his life from the attack of a 

 bull-elephant. The names of several who have thus met 

 their death in the Congo and Rhodesia have been recently 

 recorded. One had his head torn from his body by an in- 

 furiated bull he was hunting in the Loango; another was 

 trampled to death in the Congo region. Goddard, considered 

 to be one of the most experienced elephant hunters, was 

 killed in northeastern Rhodesia; another met his death 

 while hunting in the Lower Loango, and, not more than a 



*"Annales du Musee du Congo Beige," Ethnographie et Anthropologie Sec. Ill, Vol. 

 II, Fasc. I. "Les Bushongo," by E. Toudy and J. A. Joyce, Brussels, 1910, p. 64, Fig. 

 50 (on p. 73). 



^Sunday Times, Johannesburg, Transvaal, February 22, 1914. 



